{this moment}

A Friday ritual.  Photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

4H Junk Drawer Robotics Level 1, part 3

I'm catching up on my 4H posts!  I will be attending a meeting of other 4H Robotics leaders and wanted to be sure I was up to date on our progress.

Rhapsodic 4H met yesterday and we added air power, pneumatics, to the robot arms.  This was definitely the highlight of the project.  It took more time than other activities, but they enjoyed every minute.

We started with a simple air experiment to demonstrate closed and open air systems.  The balloon was our closed system and we also used a pinwheel for our open system.

As you can see below, our trunk of junk has expanded and looks like a hospital ward's cabinet.  We were able to get 10cc and 30cc syringes.  The 30cc seem to be the popular choice.  The tubing is from Lowes, although you could get it from a pet store as well.  Some kids were finding that the tubing didn't fit perfectly with the 30cc syringes, so they used tape and/or hot glue to seal them.

Mac is going to love that her Millennium Falcon shirt is in this picture.  She calls it her nerd shirt, fits right in here ;)  You can see how they used the syringe to move the arm up and down, the z axis.

Below is our usual trunk of junk.  They didn't use too much out of it for this activity.  Primarily just the tape.  

I LOVE the picture below.  It shows our oldest group working along side our youngest.  Both groups were using the hot glue guns.  These two groups as well, have consistently worked really well independently and without much help from me!  I was expecting this of the oldest group, but not of the youngest.  

4H is not competitive!  They ALL are realizing that we can learn from EVERYone, even our youngest, even our siblings who might drive us crazy at other times of the day.  

Next up...gripper hands!

4H Junk Drawer Robotics Level 1, part 2

The gang this past week has moved past marshmallows and we are on to robot arms!  

Small hint for those who have this curriculum, when doing Activity F, be sure to have large washers.  Ours were not so large, and they didn't make much weight difference, unless about 25 were used!  Lesson learned!

So Activity G, playing 3D Bingo, kind of worried me.  This is one part where I just was not sure I would come up with proper equipment without spending a ton of money and/or just not making it correctly.  Thankfully I surprised myself on this one!  I purchased from Amazon a clear CD tower for $10.  I wasn't too thrilled about spending a big number on one item, but decided it was an investment and we could use this game again, I hope!  BigD cut it in half for me to make two "boards", so to speak.  We had multiple see through CD cases that we had purchased from Target years back to store our home-movie DVDs.  I removed the DVDs and used dry erase markers to draw out the "board" on each case.  We inserted them skipping a level or two between each case.  The game markers were pony beads and buttons.  One group would simply pull out the tray to place their marker and then moved it back.

In the end, this game proved to be quite invaluable to our lesson.  When explaining in the subsequent activities how a robot arm moves on a x, y AND z axis, they could understand this much more clearly.  The idea that x goes across, y goes in and out and z goes up and down, became second nature almost.  

For Activity H, designing their arms, I withheld all of the supplies.  I allowed them to come and see them displayed in a central location if need be, but I would not allow them to take them back to their tables.  Experience from the past sessions told me that even just putting supplies on their tables, and just asking them to NOT build until they had designed, was just too tempting.

In our two hour session, we played the bingo, did the designing and was able to begin Activity I, building.  They didn't all quite finish, so we will extend this for maybe another 10 minutes next session.  This will help them get reacquainted with what they built as well as they will need to present their arms to the group.  As usual, I have one group that isn't sure theirs is "just right".  I assured them to do their best, see the presentations the other groups have and then they can do some modifying.  This isn't a competition and we can certainly learn from each other!

Some teams, as pictured above, went for the gusto and added a scoop for their hand.  This they realize, I hope :) will need to be removed when we add a gripper at the end of this level 1 book.

We did not have pegboard wooden bases for the arms.  Instead we used cardboard with plastic cups glued down into which they placed their arm supports.  This seemed to do the job.

It's pretty great seeing a kiddo who usually doesn't engage too wholeheartedly in most school-related activities to find joy and excitement in their work!  Each week the kids have asked, when is 4H again?  Tomorrow in fact!  Hooray!  More to come....we will be adding our air systems to move the arms without our hands!

Let's Go to Baltimore

Every weekend is very similar, well at least there is a similar conversation that goes on each weekend.  It goes like this:

Dh - "What should we do?  Let's do something!"

Anyone who is listening - "Okay where should we go?"

Dh - "I don't know."

Well then it just sort of deteriorates and the convo goes back and forth and no decision is usually made and in the end it becomes lunch, then after lunch and then too late to go do anything.

Now somehow this weekend...this didn't happen!  It took a small bit of convincing for some kids, but we decided to go to Baltimore for the day.  We haven't been up there for a couple of years.  We were going to go cheap this year...meaning no aquarium visit.  So we set our sights on...well...new sites for us!

If you click the picture to make it larger, you should be able to see the Baltimore skyline coming up in the windshield.

Dh allowed Mac to drive us.  She has had her license for several months, however this was her biggest trip (we are about an hour and 15 minutes away) and on some big fat highways.  She also had to manage our big old 15 passenger in downtown Baltimore.  She navigated through a long detour that got all of us disoriented, but we ended up where we wanted...she did great!

We went to Fort McHenry.  Dh and I had come here long before we had kids.  There is a great visitor's center now.  We watched a short 10 minute film on the history of the song and the battle.  Probably the best part came at the end with the playing of the National Anthem, the movie screen lifts and you see a wall of windows that frame this shot below, the flag flying over the fort today.  Very moving.

So we have one kiddo, who shall remain nameless, but hint...he is wearing yellow...who is our resident grump.  He didn't want to come, it was too hot, this is boring, really we have to stand here, he hates pictures, come on and keep moving, seriously you have to keep looking at this :P  We are laughing in the picture above because he is standing there just moaning about something as Mac was trying to take our picture.  It gets to where he is just amusing and sometimes we think he does it on purpose too!

Doodle begged to go into this cellar.  We told her we would go on the way out.  BigD was awesome and after this picture was taken, came back up to carry Buster in, which wasn't that easy.  The cellar proved to be not as exciting as Doodle had hoped.  Everyone really enjoyed walking along the water at the end.  However, the floating dead fish were slightly disconcerting...why why why they kept asking.  I told them there could just be a whole host of problems.  This could be a good rabbit trail...the health of the Chesapeake Bay.  Hmmm...

Next stop was the Walters Art Museum.  I had heard about this place years ago but we never made it up for it.  This is amazing!!!  It is free admission, which is so impressive for a private museum.  It is packed with great exhibits!  Dh and I and the older kids would love to come and spend more time.  

Above Buster and Beanie are looking at a collection of butterflies.  The magnifying glass was a huge hit for them.  There were boxes of beetles and other insects as well.

The Armor Room was a huge hit with these guys, even the boy in the yellow shirt couldn't say anything grumpy about it.  

The Walters has a great collection of Ancient art, Egyptian, Greek and Roman.  Bug wasn't having the greatest of times (he can run like CB, but usually isn't vocal about it, thank goodness at least for that!).  However, I think he enjoyed this modeling stint.

Doodle was pretty taken with the mummies and the reasons behind why they would do this in the first place.

Ancient Tebowing

Somehow Mac seems to see a resemblance in this bust with Mulder from X-Files.  I don't think I see it. But she "had" to have her picture taken with him.

After the museum, we walked about three blocks up to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  I insisted they pose in front of the sign since our homeschool name is "Assumption Academy".  They were looking into the sun, so they couldn't all look up apparently at me.  This is the best I got, heh.  

This is another place I definitely want to return to for a tour.  It was of course amazing inside.  We didn't get to spend but about 5 minutes inside since Buster was just not up for a quiet place at that point.  

 This picture below is right next to the parking lot (see the back end of a white 15 passenger in the upper left there, that's us).  Also, see Dh with hands on his hips waiting oh so patiently for us to come on :)  I thought it was a cool bench and insisted on the photo op!

Dh drove home rather than Mac.  We seemed to hit Camden Yards right before the game ended.  There were fans crossing all over the place, but they weren't streaming out yet.  Luckily I think we missed that mass exodus.

This is out of focus, I did a poor job on that one.  But I love going places and everyone snoozing within 15 minutes of leaving.  I have to say though that Mac is in the lower left corner and she is awake and laughing actually during this picture.

So who knows where we may be off to next.  It was a lot of fun just to day trip like this.  We are thinking Richmond, or Philadelphia.  Mac has colleges in both cities she wants to visit.  She even asked as we drove around today what college she could go to in Baltimore, because it looked wonderful there.  Dh said later to me...that comment was a hint to us that we need to get out more :)

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.  Photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

4H Junk Drawer Robotics Level 1, part 1

The 4H group I lead has begun a fun new project called Junk Drawer Robotics.  It's a new curriculum to 4H itself.  I thought I'd post a bit about our meetings as a sort of review of the activities and offer any tips to those who may try it out themselves!  

Each activity offers an approximate time that it will take...we are finding it is taking us longer!  This I think is a good thing actually.  So be prepared to spend some time on the activities.  I think part of it is that the kids are just really enjoying it so much, that they just naturally are spending more time with it.

As you can see...it truly is a junk drawer of supplies (actually ours fit into a copy paper box).  I've had to purchase a few supplies and lots of stuffs came from the families who participate.

Lowes was kind of enough to give us 100 paint sticks.  Drilling them does take patience as some sticks split if you go too quickly.

We have 4 families who are working on this project.  We are able to divide the kids by age, quite perfectly in fact, so that we have 5 teams altogether, four of which have 3 kids and one has two kids.

These pictures are specifically of Activity D & E - Marshmellow Catapult designing and building.  Each team had to build a trebuchet-style catapult that would launch a marshmallow over 6 feet.  They could only use 5 different materials from the junk drawer.

Your natural engineers pop out instantly on these exercises.  If you ever had any question about whether your kid was a builder or not, this will answer them.  That group above, they are our youngest group, one is 10 years old and the other two are 9 years old.  These kids are sometimes the first ones finished (our oldest team has 2 ninth graders and 1 tenth grader) and their designs work the first time.  It is amazing to watch how well they work together and get things accomplished.  They also draw their designs and explain and demonstrate amazingly!

To say the group had fun demonstrating their designs is really an understatement.  In then end, although they were all asked to build in the same style, they had quite unique designs.

For our next session they designed and began building their robot arm.  Pictures and post to come soon!

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.  Photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.