Honestly, I’m not sure if I did my Eganized lesson “correctly.” I’m trying to learn more about his model in my freetime, but I’m no expert in this. What I do know is that I used my imagination, I asked the kids to use theirs, and we all had a good time. The tools that I tried to use from Egan’s framework were storytelling, role-playing, emotional engagement, extremes, humor (because honestly, it was a little ridiculous), vivid imagery, riddles, the binary of life/death, and the heroic quality of saving the world from a super-villain. The kids that I gave my lesson to were a homeschool group between the ages of about 6 and 14. I did go through it a little fast and the lesson lasted about 20-ish minutes.

Initially, I was having trouble figuring out how to Eganize the lesson. The first step in creating a lesson using Egan’s framework is to figure out what’s wonderful about it. That part didn’t seem too hard, because photosynthesis is literally the reason why life on Earth exists. Without it, there wouldn’t be plants and the food chain would collapse fairly rapidly. We oxygen-dependent creatures eventually wouldn’t be able to breathe. But what do you do with that? I was stuck. Then, Brandon from Science is WEIRD suggested that I be a super villain with a photosynthesis off button. At 5’2″, I’m not physically very threatening and I smile constantly, so I didn’t think anyone would buy it, but that gave me the idea to pretend like we were trying together to defeat a supervillain with a photosynthesis off button.

I played around with AI and got it to make me a Photosynthesis Off button that turned out surprisingly well. I gathered clue images using both a royalty free website and AI when I couldn’t find what I wanted. I got the idea to make an official looking letter asking us to solve the case that I could pass around. The morning of the lesson, I had the idea to put everything in a manila envelope labeled TOP SECRET. Even my teenager got pretty into it. As we were driving to the lesson, he changed my ring tone to something that sounded very Mission-Impossible-ish and we worked out a code phrase for him to call me at a specific moment at the beginning of the lesson to get the ball rolling.

Overall, I think it went really well. There were around 15 to 20 kids and even the older ones were clearly amused. The feedback I received from my induction mentor was that all the kids seemed very engaged and nearly all of them actually spoke or contributed in some way. It probably helps that these were all homeschool kids that I know to some degree, so they were more or less willing to go along with my nonsense, but I think it’s fair to say we all had a good time and nearly everyone hopefully learned something.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: 20 to 30 minutes, plus extra if you want to start a leaf collection
Difficulty: easy, but requires an adult to lead the child or group of children
Cost: Free printable

Materials

• paper or device with screen
• manila envelope (optional)
• cup of water (optional)
• leaf (optional)
• flashlight (optional)

Free Printable

Photosynthesis Lesson – Complete Packet with Instructions

Photosynthesis Lesson – Just the Printables

Instructions

1. PART 1: SET THE SCENE – Print the printables packet or load it up on a tablet or other device if you are using technology to share the clues. If you are printing it out, consider putting all the paper in a manila envelope and writing TOP SECRET on the outside. As you are getting your lesson started and talking to the kids casually, pretend to receive communication from a secret agency. You can either have someone in the audience call your phone and pretend to answer it, or have someone deliver your Top Secret envelope to you, or pretend to receive an important transmission on your device. See the instructions packet for an actual script you can use to introduce the evil Dr. Shrubslayer and the Photosynthesis Off button.
   
   
   
   
   
2. PART 2: PHOTOSYNTHESIS – The next step is to get kids to understand a bit about the chemical reaction that IS photosynthesis. What are the inputs? What are the outputs? Try to think of this as a dialogue. See what the kids already know. Ask them to think about what plants need to grow. If they need help, you can show them the clues. Even if they don’t need help, you can still show them the clues to make more of a visual impact. Photosynthesis needs sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide (what we humans breathe out).
   
   
   
   The outputs are oxygen (that’s an oxygen tank on the scuba diver) and glucose (a type of sugar).
   
   
   
   If you would like to help kids remember this reaction, ask for 3 volunteers, one to be water, one to be light, and one to be carbon dioxide. One child will hold a cup of water and you can stick a leaf in it. Next have another kid shine a flashlight on the leaf, and have the third kid blow on it. Ask everyone to imagine the oxygen coming out of the plant and take deep breathes to breathe it in. Ask them to also imagine it growing very slowly as it uses up the sugar to get bigger.
   
3. PART 3: IMPACTS OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS – Now that they know what photosynthesis is, the students have to decide if they want to help capture Dr. Shrubslayer and stop him from using his Photosynthesis Off machine. (We’re busy people. We can’t stop EVERY super villain that comes to town.) In order to decide whether we want to go to the trouble of helping, we need to know why photosynthesis is important. Again, have a conversation and see what the kids already know. Ask them to think about the inputs and outputs of photosynthesis that we just discovered and what could happen if that reaction was not taking place. Show the visual clues as needed to either prompt an answer or highlight an answer given. The answer are that if there was no photosynthesis, we would all be hungry (talk about how even carnivores rely on plants), the land would be barren, and we would all struggle to breathe.
   
   
   
4. PART 4: CHLOROPHYLL – Hopefully at the end of the last section, the kids will decide YES, it’s important that we thwart the evil plan to end photosynthesis. Now introduce the next part of the role-playing game. Say that a secret code word is required to break into his facility and destroy his device. Thankfully, we have a riddle to help us figure out what the code word is. Again, refer to the Instruction Packet for a suggested script. Present this riddle:
   
   
   
   Use the riddle as a starting point for discussion. Have the kids decipher what the riddle means, line by line. What sort of word are we looking for? Once they figure out that it is a chemical that makes plants green in summer, but goes away in fall, see if anyone knows the word. Whether they do or don’t, show them the visual clues to help them remember the word: a pool for CHLOR, a donut for O, and candy filling for FILL. Chlor-O-Fill –> Chlorophyll
   
   
   
   Once they figure out the secret word, pretend to call it in and act like they have saved the world. They have kept the planet green and alive instead of barren and dead!
   
   
   
5. PART 5: LEAF COLLECTION (optional) – Since the group I did the lesson for was an outdoor nature group (Wild + Free), I wanted to give them something hands-on to do that involved nature. I brought little sheets of paper and crayons and challenged the kids to make leaf rubbings of as many different types of leaves as possible. The younger kids tried it, but at this point the preteens and teens mostly wandered away to socialize, which was fine too.

I hope you have fun learning a bit about photosynthsis in this unconventional way! If you try it out, let me know how it goes!

Related Links

Best Books for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids
Tabletop Games for Kids

The post Imaginative Photosynthesis Lesson appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Many people know that I made my kids’ Minimalist Math elementary curriculum. I’m pretty proud of this. I worked hard to make sure the math covered all the same content kids would see in a traditional curriculum and it has built in repetition that helps these concepts to stick. For science, we have been using Science is WEIRD for the past 4 years and love it. For history, we’ve tried different things, but last year, I just read a chapter each week from Curiosity Chronicles and it went fine. Language Arts though! I love Brave Writer. I used to work for Brave Writer. Their philosophy about education aligns really well with my own unschool-y tendencies. However, it’s a bit parent-intensive. You read great books and discuss. A LOT. I knew I wasn’t going to do it justice while working full time.

That awareness of my own limits led me to create 36 worksheets last summer that covered the basics of what I felt like kids should know from looking through the various language arts curriculum I’ve purchased over the years. Capitalization, punctuation, homonyms, parts of speech, sentence structure, verb tenses, point of view, even a little spelling…I wanted to make sure they were touching on these topics throughout the year so that they could get more comfortable with them.

Brave Writer uses actual passages from actual books written by real authors which I love. I didn’t want there to be any sort of copyright issues and I wanted to tailor the passages to the concepts that I wanted kids to think about, so I wrote my own. I am not an author. These passages are a little silly and far-fetched, but I wrote things that I hoped my kids would find mildly amusing. Each page is one week of work, which takes about 15 minutes with help.

There are 3 parts to each page. The top part focuses on mechanics through corrections (end marks, commas, punctuating dialogue, capitalization, that sort of thing) with a little bit of spelling through having them pick the correct homonym (such as there/their/they’re) and correcting spelling mistakes.

The second part focuses on sentence structure by having them learn to identify the subject and predicate as well as the type of sentence (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory). We also focus on verb tenses (past/present/future) and point of view (first/second/third).

The third part is entirely grammar work by having them identify parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, articles, adverbs, etc.).

After I had made 36 worksheets for the 36 weeks of the school year, I still had a little time, so I decided to go through all 36 sheets and make a LEVEL 2 for my middle schooler. It is the exact same passages, but I added at most a sentence or two and asked them to do more (make more corrections, identify more parts of speech, etc.). I also added in some more difficult concepts like gerunds, participles, and appositives. Not that I think my kids really need to know these things, but I don’t them to be afraid of words they’ve never heard of before.

More than anything, these sheets became conversation starters. To be fair, I think most adults don’t know all of these concepts (and we’re just fine, aren’t we? ). It got to the point that my husband wouldn’t help their kids on these sheets, because he didn’t have a lot of confidence that he was doing it correctly. The reason why I didn’t post these last summer was because I wanted to have experience using them, and I wanted to make an answer key. I just finished the answer keys about a couple weeks ago, but they are currently only available to Patreon subscribers. It is $5/month and you can cancel after one month, but if that is a financial burdern, just let me know and we can work something out.

These sheets definitely served their purpose. My third grader used Level 1 all year. My 7th grader used Level 2 all year. My 5th grader started with Level 1, but partway through the year, I realized there wasn’t any reason why he couldn’t do Level 2 so I switched him. If you know what you are doing, I would say Level 1 takes about 60 seconds and Level 2 takes about 3 minutes. Since the kids inevitably need help and require some explanation, overall, they would work on it on their own for about 5 to 10 minutes, then I would help them for around 10 minutes, reminding them what all the different concepts mean.

There is no instruction included, so if you need help, you will likely need to search on Google (or YouTube) for concepts like conjunctions. (I know I did!) After having put this together, though, and writing up an answer key, I feel pretty confident that I know what I’m doing, so also feel free to reach out if you have a questions or think I got something wrong!

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School (roughly 3rd to 8th grade, should have some basic reading skills)
Time Required: about 20 minutes per week
Difficulty: varies, there are easier and harder concepts each week
Cost: Free printable

Materials
paper

Instructions
Print out the curriculum and help your child complete one worksheet each week for each of the 36 weeks of school. If your child is in 3rd through 5th grade, I would try Level 1 first. If your child is in 6th to 8th grade, you may want to consider starting with Level 2.

Free Printable

Minimalist Grammar + Mechanics – Level 1

Minimalist Grammar + Mechanics – Level 2

Related Links

Math Activities for Kids
Best Books for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids

The post Minimalist Grammar + Mechanics appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

If a kid enjoys reading, then I feel like they are pretty much guaranteed to get a better education than a child who attends school for 6 to 7 hours a day and does NOT enjoy reading. Kids forget 95% of the facts they learn anyway. (I just made that statistic up, but it feels right, doesn’t it?) But stories? Those last. Someone who reads confidently and comfortably can learn anything. As a bonus, reading about characters and storylines that authors have taken the time to carefully construct get lessons on life and character and morality. It is a rare day when I stop one of my children from reading a book for pleasure. Though, to be fair, this also true of when they are drawing, building, playing fantasy games, etc. Some parents never wake a sleeping baby. I never interrupt a happily playing child that is using their imagination.

Now, my first two children became readers fairly naturally. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I had a lot more time to practice with them when they were young. See this adorable reading log train I used with them. My third child was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade. Getting him to be comfortable reading took a lot more work, but now he is going into 6th grade and reads ALL the time. He was literally bugging me just a few minutes about when the libray books I requested for him are coming in. (Answer, sometime between Tuesday and December. You never can tell.) My fourth child though…oh my poor fourth child. I went back to college to become a teacher when he was 6. I finished my degree, got my teachers license and am not working full time. The end result? He is going into fourth grade and was still reading at about a first grade level in January.

This needed to be fixed. In my opinion, the best way to teach a kid to read is to facilitate practice. I started by going back to basics. I learned from my dyslexic child the importance of decodable texts for building reading skills so I went back and redid my kindergarten and first grade suggestions on my Book Series for Kids page. Then I told him the plan. We were goign to make a reading chain, because who has time for a train in this busy world, and I was going to sit with him every day so we could read books (easy books) to add to his chain. His reward was that once he chain was as long as our hallway, he would get to pick a flavor of ice cream that we would have for dessert.

We used many of the books on the Kindergarten and First Grade series pages, though I’m realizing now that I forgot to add the ones in the picture above. Those are from Julia Donaldson’s Songbirds series (affiliate link) which is a bit expensive, but quite lovely. I will be saving them for any future potential grandkids.

What I was even more pleased by though was that when we finished our chain, my then third grade son did not want to stop. He kept going on his own. He made little rocketships and would add them as he read his easy readers by himself. At first, he was not adding the titles, but when I told him he should, he started doing it.

Even my 5th grade dyslexic child didn’t want to miss out on the action. He made his own reading chain too. At this point, he is obsessed with the Wings of Fire books and read one every 3 days or so, but for his reading challenge, he went back and read some books that were easy for him like Dragon Masters. It does not matter to me what they read, as long as they are reading.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this went. We are using different strategy over the summer, to ensure my youngest makes the most progress possible in this downtime. I’m hoping to share this with results at the end of summer. However, the reading chains were a very successful strategy during the busy school year time. It took some diligence when I was the one reading with him every day and helping him make his chain, but it was worth it. I did not even expect him to take over and keep doing it on his own. That was just a bonus. I would say he progressed about a full grade level during the 5 months of so that he was doing it, which still leaves him about a grade level behind his age and about a grade level from the really fun books.

All kids develop at their own pace, so I never want my kids to feel pressured. However, if we can use this summer to turn him into someone who really enjoys reading, I am all for it!

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: ~10 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Practically free

Materials:

• paper (preferably colored construction paper for visual appeal)
• scissors or paper cutter
• tape

Instructions:

1. Cut the paper into strips.
2. Acquire some easy books. Check your local library or my book series suggestions.
3. Everytime the child reads a book, either alone or with your help, write the title and add it to the chain!

That’s it! Happy reading!

Click here for more Starting to Read activities for kids.

Related Links

Best Books for Kids
Homemade Fun for Preschoolers
Learning Activities for Kids

The post Reading Chains appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

While I definitely have opinions about politics, I have done my best to make this lap book as neutral and nonpartisan as possible. I believe that the best future is one in which all sides can communicate openly and respectfully with one another and try to understand each other’s point of view.

That being said, while I tried to create this lap book as accurately as possible, there may be finer points of certain political parties which I am not as familiar with. If you believe I got anything wrong regarding any of the four candidates positions on certain issues, please let me know. I am always learning.

For those that have older kids vs. younger kids, there are two versions of this lapbook. One version I call the “minimal writing” version. It is the one I use with my own kids. Anything that could be pre-filled out, I typed in already. There is still some writing, like the page that asks who the child would vote for. However, it is not as overwhelming for new writers.

The other version leaves a lot more blank, so older kids can research the answers. They will need to look up the duties of the president and vice president and the dates of the debates, election, and inauguration. They will need to find the number of electoral voters per state. The biggest undertaking is the chart in which kids will need to decide which issues are important to them and then research the different candidates’ positions on those issues.

Of course, there is always the option to mix and match. Some kids might benefit from looking up some answers, while having others already filled in for them. Both versions of the lap book have a map for the child to color as the results come in. There is also a final tally page where they can keep track of the number of electoral votes awarded for each candidate. This way they can watch real time who is winning the race to 270 electoral votes and the presidency.

If you are using this lap book with elementary-aged kids or younger, there are two picture books that I recommend trying to get from your library. Back when I made our first election lap book 8 years ago, our family really enjoyed Grace For President by Kelly DiPucchio. Not only is it a charming story, it does a fantastic job of introducing kids to concepts such as the electoral college and swing states.

We also read Duck for President by Doreen Cronin. This book targets a slightly younger audience. All my kids liked it, including my preschooler, though my older kids did not learn anything new. It is great for explaining what an election is and illustrating the difference between local vs. national politics.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~30 minutes to assemble
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable

Materials

• Paper for printing 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Lap Book. (Note that if you are doing the “minimal writing” version of the lap book, you will want to print pages 1-13. If you are doing the blank version, you will want pages 1-7 and 14-19.)
• manila file folder (personally, I like the straight cut version for lap books, but any will work equally well.)
• 4 pieces of cardstock

Supplies & Tools

• Scissors
• Tape
• Pencil
• Glue
• Stapler

Instructions

1. First, print out the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Lap Book. If you would like to create the “minimal writing” version of the lap book, you will want to print pages 1-13. If you would rather create the blank version, print pages 1-7 and 14-19.
2. Cut out all the pieces.
   
3. Make your election vocabulary booklets and staple them together. You have some options. My personal preference is to put the picture on top, then the definition (which I call the clue), and then the vocabulary word on the bottom. That way kids can test themselves to see if they can figure out what the word is using the picture and definition. Another option would be to put the word on top, then the picture and definition underneath.
   
4. Fold the shorter side of your manila file folder inward to meet the middle, as shown.
   
5. Fold the longer side of the manila file folder in to meet the middle as well. I chose to overlap them slightly, but that is up to you.
   
6. Tape a piece of cardstock to the top of the lap book. Remember to tape it from behind when it is folded down so it can open and close easily.
   
7. Tape a sheet of cardstock to the bottom of lapbook. Again, remember to tape it when it is folded inside the lap book.
   
8. Tape a second piece of cardstock to the right of the piece of cardstock at the top of the lap book.
   
9. Cut your last piece of cardstock in half. I used a paper cutter, but you could also just fold it in half and use scissors.
   
10. Tape one of the half sheets of cardstock onto the left of the sheet of cardstock on top.
    
    When you are finished attaching the cardstock, it should look like this:
    
11. Place the cover page on top of the file folder and center it.
    
12. Without moving the page, bring forward whichever side of the file folder will be on top. I chose to bring the shorter side forward, but it doesn’t really matter. Use a pencil to mark the edge of the side. This is where you will cut.
    
13. Cut along the pencil marking.|
    
14. Glue the cover pieces onto the front of the lapbook.
    
15. When you open the election lap book, glue the President and Vice President duties on either side. Remember that there are two versions of these sheets – one filled in and one blank. Choose the one that is more appropriate for your child.
    
16. Glue the Political Parties label and cards onto the piece of cardstock on top, when it is folded down, as shown.
    
17. When you lift up the political parties, glue the presidential candidates on the bottom sheet of cardstock which is still folded up. Be sure to match the candidates to the political parties that were on the top sheet.
    
    
18. On the half sheet of cardstock directly above the presidential candidates, before it is opened up, glue in the important dates. Note that there are two versions of this page with the dates blank and filled in.
    
19. On the full piece of cardstock directly above the presidential candidates, before it is opened up, glue in the election vocabulary.
    
20. In the area after you unfold the top pieces of card stock, glue the important issues onto the 2 and half page spread. You can choose to either use the pre-filled-in issues pages or the blank version.
    
21. When you fold down the presidential candidates, glue the electoral map onto the middle section of the manila file folder and the final tally onto the very bottom piece of cardstock. Note that there are two versions of these pages as well.
    

Your 2024 United States presidential election lap book is now ready to use. Have fun taking advantage of this once-in-four-years learning opportunity!

Click here for more Government and Civics activities and printables for kids.

Related Links

History Activities for Kids
Social Science Activities for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids

The post 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Lap Book appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

This 2024 set of presidential election cards features the following 20 vocabulary words and 4 candidates:

• election
• president
• vice president
• campaign
• electoral college
• debate
• popular vote
• incumbent
• caucus
• ballot
• democracy
• inauguration
• executive branch
• swing state
• veto
• political party
• Republican Party
• Democratic Party
• Libertarian Party
• Green Party
• Donald Trump
• Kamala Harris
• Chase Oliver
• Jill Stein

These cards are actually inspired by Montessori education, meaning that in addition to the control cards shown above, they also come as split cards used for matching. Younger kids can match just the pictures to the names or words. Slightly older kids can match the pictures to the name or key word plus description. The oldest kids can math the name or key word to the description or try to match all 3 parts. Once kids have done the matching, they can use the control cards to see if they are right, making the activity self-correcting if you want it to be.

Another thing I love about Montessori-inspired multi-part cards is that they can be used for a number of games. The cards which contain on the information can be used as clue cards. You can use any board game (like Candyland or Chutes & Ladders) and some dice to race to the finish by just drawing a clue card for each turn and only rolling if you can correctly name the word associated with the clue card. If you don’t have a game board, you are welcome to print out my free generic game board.

Another way to play games with these cards is to do a memory style matching game. Simply choose two types of cards like picture and full information or word and clue. Then lay them out in a grid and take turns trying to make matches. I recommend not starting out with the full set of 24 cards. Start with a smaller subset and then work your way up.

Personally, I recommend laminating the cards for durability, but if you only plan to use them for a couple days, you could leave them as just paper. Printing on cardstock is also an option.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, less than $3 to laminate

Materials:

• Paper for printing U.S. Presidential Election Cards and corresponding control cards. (Note that the last page of each document does not need to be printed as it just contains legal information regarding image sources.)
• Paper for printing bonus Presidential Candidates 2024 cards (again, no need to print the last page)
• 18 thermal laminating pouches

Supplies & Tools:

• Laminator
• Paper trimmer or scissors

Instructions:

1. Print the U.S. Presidential Election Cards, the corresponding control cards, and the 2024 Presidential Candidates bonus cards
2. Laminate them using thermal laminating pouches (instead, you could also print on card stock, use contact paper to laminate, or not laminate them at all).
   
3. Cut them out.
   

See my Montessori-inpired cards page for further details on how to use these cards.

Enjoy turning this upcoming 2024 presidential election into a hands-on learning experience for your children!

Click here for more Government and Civics activities and printables for kids.

Related Links

History Activities for Kids
Social Science Activities for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids

The post 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Cards appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Like my multiplication sheets, these division practice sheets are focused on helping kids memorize their times tables. These are NOT practice sheets for long division (though if anyone would like something along those lines, let me know)! These sheets are simply the inverse of the multiplication ones. They will help children see the connection between mutliplication and division.

When I started putting them together I had a moment of uncertainty where I was considering which form to write the division problem. Should I use the division symbol, write it as a fraction, or put the number inside the house like we do with long division? Eventually, I opted for all 3! It’s important for kids to know that even though they look different, all three of these forms are representing division!

Like my multiplication sheets, these practice pages focus on one number at a time, but then also have review pages up to and including that number. I definitely recommend going through the multiplication sheets first, but then when you want to start division, I hope this format helps your child not feel too overwhelmed as they build up their skills.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary
Time Required: 1 minute
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable

Materials:
paper

Instructions:
Print out these free printable division practice sheets as many times as you want. Here is an answer key in case it is helpful!

Related Links

Math Resources
Free Minimalist Math Curriculum
Best Books for Kids

The post Division Practice Sheets appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

I have had so much fun coaching FLL! If you are thinking about doing it, I can’t emphasize enough what a valuable experience this is for children. Since I’ve also been doing my students teaching in a high school physics classrom while coaching robotics, I’ve seen the problems with expecting students to follow an assigned curricula. There is no motivation. In the FLL classroom, students can’t help but learn. The challenges are fun and the kids are motivated to solve them through trial and error. Especially if you have kids that want to go into STEM fields later in life, I highly recommend FLL. We are so lucky that FIRST exists!

Here are some key lessons I learned during my inaugural season. I hope some of them are helpful to you.

1. Clean your wheels!

If the mission you are trying to solve relies on your robot traveling a precise distance, you want your wheels to grip the mat the same way every time. Slipping is death! We missed what would have been our top score at one of our tournaments by a mere millimeter and the grime on our wheels was 100% to blame for this. As soon as I cleaned it up with a hand sanitizing wipe it started behaving the way it had in practice.

2. Make sure kids know how to pass the robot. 

In the loud, anxiety-producing environment of a tournament, accidents will happen. During our practice round at the competition, one child hurriedly tried passing the robot to another child who wasn’t ready. The robot fell and broke into 4 or 5 pieces just seconds before they were about to go on. (Thankfully we had a backup!) I think I will be telling this story for years to come to make sure kids know how important it is to make sure the person that is receiving the handoff is ready!

3. Speaking of anxiety, try playing an applause/cheering YouTube track in the background when the kids practice.

There’s nothing like being at a real competition, but this can help them be a little more prepared for the intensity that they will feel when they are at the real thing! 

4. If at all possible, have a backup robot!

See #2. 

5. Also, have a USB key with all of your programs backed up.

You never know what will happen! See #6.

6. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, switch computers between practice and the tournament.

I tried to make a minor change to one of the programs at a tournament only to have the Spike Prime update and delete ALL the programs on the robot. Thankfully, I had the programs backed up and could quickly add them back onto the robot. (Thank you, #5!) However, the maximum speed of the robot was slightly different after the update and all of our codes were a little off. I eventually figured out that connecting the robot to computer with a newer version of the Spike Prime app caused the update. It’s hard to know exactly what version of the app each individual computer is using, so in the future, I will never switch mid tournament!

7. Set your speed and acceleration in each of your programs.

Even though I honestly believe the update affected our robot’s maximum speed in a way I don’t yet know how to control, it is still a good idea to slightly lower your robot’s maximum speed and acceleration for precision movements! These changes will slow the robot down but also make its behavior more repeatable. If you are just returning to home base or need to slam into a wall, go ahead and increase the speed back up to save those few precious seconds!

8. Speaking of precision, you need to be using the gyro for precision missions!

It is frustrating for the kids when the robot seems to behave differently each time you run it. Our teams had an advantage in that both my co-coach and I have a lot of experience programming. We knew how to make use of the gyro sensor. I’m planning to add some tutorials to the blog soon so you can avoid some of those frustrations as well! Stay tuned!

9. Think outside the box.

Watching how other teams completed missions at the tournaments gave us ideas for extra ways to earn points. We were able to implement some of these changes between qualifiers and regionals. Remember that you don’t need to solve the missions the way the designer intended. All that matters is the configutation of the table when the time runs out. At our very first meeting of the season, the veteran coach I was working with had the kids brainstorming different ideas for how they could solve each mission. This is SUCH a valuable practice! We will definitely spend more time strategizing out-of-the-box strategies earlier in future seasons.

10. Remember the robot game itself is only a small piece of FLL.

I’ll be honest, the robot game is all I really cared about. It’s the part that seems the most fun to me, so it is definitely where we put our focus throughout our team meetings. However, once you get to the tournament, the Innovation Project, the robot design presentation, and the way the team demonstrates their core values have equal weight. Even though one or our teams got a trophy for coming in 3rd in the robot games, they did not advance to the Championships. I still need to learn more about how those decisions are made, but in the future, we will put a little more thought and effort into the 3 judging categories as well! Our innovation project actually turned out amazing and is leading to us starting a chess club in our small town, but this didn’t come about into AFTER the tournaments, because we put it off to focus on the game.

I hope some of these FLL coaching tips were helpful to you in your FIRST LEGO League journey! Feel free to reach out if you have questions!

Related Links

Robotics Activities for Kids
Science Activities for Kids
All Learning Activities

The post 10 Lessons Learned My First Year as an FLL Coach appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

My goal for this series of challenges is to only use pieces that come in the LEGO Spike Prime Education set. (That’s the big yellow box.) For the actual competition, I suspect we’ll want the expansion set so that we can build a multi-functional robot. However, even the missions that are part of the competition can all be done one at a time with these basic pieces. There is a TON of robotics that kids can learn from just the base Spike Prime Education set.

This challenge in particular requires a skill that is extremely useful in the FLL competition world. Namely, to build an attachment using gears to create an arm of the robot that can operate in a particular way. That was also the intent of my knocking over a tower challenge. However, while that one could hypothetically be solved without creating an arm that moves, this one would be much more tricky.

This one is also slightly more challenging than the previous tower-knocking challenge, because the gears need to turn in different places. One gear will lie flat and the other will stand vertically in order to get that up-and-down motion. Of course, kids could redesign their robots completely, but I’m assuming that they start with the base robot described here.

The challenge and my solution in particular will be described in detail below. In case you have missed any of the previous challenges in this 6-part series, here they are for your reference. If you want to be notified of future challenges, feel free to sign up for my newsletter!

• Spike Prime Challenge 1: Moving to a Square
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 2: Avoiding an Obstacle
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 3: Pushing an Object
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 4: Using a Distance Center for Navigation
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 5: Knocking Over a Tower
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 6: Lifting a Square (*this post*)

Spike Prime Challenge: Lifting a Square Details

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: This took my kids about 20 minutes, but it could be more or less!
Difficulty: Medium to Hard
Cost: The LEGO Education Spike Prime Set costs $400 on the LEGO site. As of this writing, it is more expensive on Amazon, but I would check to compare!

The Challenge

The challenge is fairly straightforward. First, set up the starting and target squares as in the Moving a Square challenge. Next create a structure in the target square as shown. The two solid yellow pieces from the Spike Prime Education set will support the blue rectangular frame. (I realize now that I should have called this challenge Lifting the Quadrilateral, not Lifting the Square. )

Once everything is set up, the challenge is to completely remove the blue piece from the two yellow pieces holding it up without knocking over the yellow pieces. If kids get clever and build an attachment that simply pushes it off, congratulate them on their success, then specify that they now have to take the blue frame back to the starting square once they remove it. (This would REALLY replicate a FLL challenge.) By requiring them to pick up the piece and move it somewhere else, odds are that they will find a solution requiring them to create a rotating lever arm.

My Solution

This is the most challenging of these initial series of challenges by far! The kids have to think 3 dimensionally to see how a gear rotating in a horizontal plane can be used to create a level that will move in a vertical plane. (Of course, the kids can always re-design the base robot so that the gear is vertical. I don’t like to remove any options from the table!) All that to say, if you or your child needs to look at my solution for ideas, don’t feel bad! We all learn by modeling others.

As with the distance sensor for navigation challenge, I’m going to start by first showing you three different attachments. The first was built by my 9 and 11-year old, but it didn’t quite fit on the robot, though it still worked, as you’ll see. The next one was my 13-year-old’s design which removed the issue that my younger kids were experiencing. The last one was designed by me, where I took my 13-year-old’s design (yes, I realize I took the easy way out ), but then I arguably improved it by simplifying it.

Here is my younger kid’s design. They figured out that to get the arm to move up and down, you have to interlock the gears perpendicular to each other. I really admire the simplicity of their design. However, you’ll notice that the gear hits the hub, causing the axel to bend slightly. Despite this, they were able to complete the challenge!

Next, here is my teen’s attachment. He took the originally attachment that the younger kids made and redesigned it so that it would fit onto the car better. This one also works, though it is slightly more complicated!

Here’s my design after I started with my oldest’s and removed the pieces I felt were unnecessary:

And here is my code! Note that I finally got around to figuring out how far one rotation would move the car and adding in a line of code so that I could tell the car exactly how far to go. There was still quite a bit of trial and error, however!

Good luck completing this challenge! If you’d like to share pictures of your attachment with me, I’d love to see them!

Related Links

Robotics Activities for Kids
Science Activities for Kids
All Learning Activities

The post Spike Prime Challenge: Lifting a Square appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

This is my first challenge that will involve using an actual sensor. In that way, this is the first ACTUAL robot tutorial of this entire website. (If you haven’t already, feel free to check out all the mini-bot tutorials I made several years ago when my kids were little! Those involved learning about electronic components, but since they were not responding to their environment, they were *technically* not real robots!)

I was excited for my kids to try out the distance sensor, in particular, because I think it might be useful for the FIRST LEGO League Challenge competition that I’m hoping to coach this year. Basically, the goal is that rather than telling exactly how far forward the car should go, the child should place an object in front of the car’s path and then get it to stop when it is a certain distance from that object. A more difficult challenge would be to not tell the car how far to turn either, but even I’m not sure how to do that yet! Instead, I still allowed my kids to tell the car how many rotations to turn.

This challenge is also a little more difficult than previous challenges because the kids have to somehow find a way to attach the distance sensor to the robot itself. This attachment will be slightly more challenging than the first attachment required in the Pushing an Obejct Challenge. Kids are likely to find that they prefer one task over the other. Some kids will prefer the building. Others will prefer the coding. Personally, I prefer the coding, but my 9 year old LOVES to build. Neither is better than the other and both preferences play a valuable role on a robotics team.

For your reference, here are the challenges that I’ve done so far and the ones that I’m planning to write soon. Sign up for my newsletter to stay up-to-date!

• Spike Prime Challenge 1: Moving to a Square
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 2: Avoiding an Obstacle
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 3: Pushing an Object
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 4: Using a Distance Center for Navigation (*this post*)
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 5: Knocking Over a Tower
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 6: Lifting a Square

Spike Prime Challenge: Using the Distance Sensor for Navigation Details

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: This took my kids about 20 minutes, but it could be more or less!
Difficulty: Easy to Medium
Cost: The LEGO Education Spike Prime Set costs $400 on the LEGO site. As of this writing, it is more expensive on Amazon, but I would check to compare!

The Challenge

This challenge involves two parts. The first part is to somehow take the distance sensor and attach it to the hub using the pieces in the yellow bin that came with the robot. (If you have other pieces, feel free to use those as well!) You can think of the sensor like eyes. You have to put the eyes on the front of the car so that it can “see” where it’s going.

The second part of the challenge is to use the “eyes” to tell the car when to stop rather than telling the car how many rotations to move forward. No longer can they say “move forward for 3 rotations.” That block is no longer allowed is no longer allowed in this challenge. Instead the car will approach “walls” and you will tell it to stop when it is a certain distance from a wall. Note that I used the yellow bin and the two yellow surfaces for my walls, but kids can use different household items and position them where ever they want.

The goal is to make it from the starting square to the target square without telling the robot to move forward for a specified distance or number of rotations.

My Solution

The first step is to attach the distance sensor to your bot. There are several different ways that you could go about solving this challenge. To give you an example, I’m going to first show you the different ways my 13-year-old, my 9-year-old, and I built our attachments. Here is my 9 year old’s design:

The biggest issue with this design is that the “eyes” can rotate up and down. This could be considered a feature as you have the option of pointing the eyes upward or in any direction you want. However, if we were professionally designing a robot, we would definitely want to lock the sensor in place. It would be terrible if this were a Mars rover and driving over bump terrain caused the sensor to rotate straight down into the bot itself. However, for this particular challenge, my 9-year-old’s design worked perfectly.

Next, here is my design. My primary goal was to have a simple design that locked the sensor in place.

This design does the job, with 4 pins and one square piece that allows us to connect two surfaces in different planes.

Finally, I will show you my 13-year-old’s design. It made me laughs when I saw it.

He simply used two pins to connect the sensor directly to the motor, which hadn’t even occured to me. It is off center, but still capable of “seeing” walls as it approaches them. All-in-all, his functions well, has the sensor locks in place and uses two fifths the number of pieces as my design. Well-played, sir.

Once you have your sensor design, the next step is to set up walls so that the bot will have an indicator of where to stop. My goal was to have my robot drive straight until it needed to make roughly a right angle turn to get to the blue square, then drive straight until it was close to my second wall. This is how I set up my walls:

And here is the program I wrote that would accomplish this task:

Good luck doing your first challenge with a sensor! Feel free to reach out with questions!

Related Links

Robotics Activities for Kids
Science Activities for Kids
All Learning Activities

The post Spike Prime Challenge: Using Distance Sensor for Navigation appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

If your child has already completed the first two challenges, this one should be a piece of cake. It requires the same skills as before. Namely, the ability to drive the car from a starting location to a target destination. They could even use the same progam they wrote for the first challenge, Moving to a Square. However, this time they will likely want to build an attachment to push the object with, so I wanted to keep it simple.

Some kids that play with LEGOs all the time will likely find this challenge trivial. Others will probably wonder, “how in the heck am I supposed to attach ANYTHING to this?” I have kids that fall on both ends of the spectrum. However, I have noticed that even those that missed the boat on playing with LEGOs as a kid catch on pretty quickly. They might need to model others for awhile, but eventually it will all start coming more naturally.

For your convenience, here are all the challenges I have written so far or have plans to write in the near future. Sign up for my newsletter to say up-to-date!

• Spike Prime Challenge 1: Moving to a Square
• Spike Prime Challenge 2: Avoiding an Obstacle
• Spike Prime Challenge 3: Pushing an Object (*this post*)
• Spike Prime Challenge 4: Using a Distance Center for Navigation
• Spike Prime Challenge 5: Knocking Over a Tower
• Spike Prime Challenge 6: Lifting a Square

Spike Prime Challenge: Moving to Square Details

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: This took my kids about 5 minutes, since one child in particular is really good at buildign with LEGOs, but it could be more or less!
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: The LEGO Education Spike Prime Set costs $400 on the LEGO site. As of this writing, it is more expensive on Amazon, but I would check to compare!

The Challenge

This challenge is very similar to the first challenge, Moving to a Square. If you need to set up a starting squae and a target square using masking tape, please refer back to that post for detailed instructions. Rather than simply driving the robot from one square to the other, this time, there is an object (such as the masking tape) in the target destination. The objective this time is to move that object completely out of the square.

If your child is completely stuck, you could ask if they would rather push or pull the object out of the square. Pushing is definitely easier. Then ask them how they want to push. What surface are they going to use to push the tape out of the way? Could they somehow add a flat surface to the front of their robot like a plow that could be used for pushing?

My Solution

I will say this each time, but my solution is not the only correct solution! The students may find that they don’t need any sort of attachement. Maybe they can just drive their robot past the square and find that in the process the tape is moved out of the square! As long as they are solving the challenge the way you presented it, whatever they do is a complete success!

For my solution, I first created an attachment to add a “plow” feature to the front of my robot. Here’s what it looked like:

So that you can see how it was made here are some expanded views with it taken off the robot and broken into it’s component pieces

Once my plow piece was attached, I simply modified my program from the first challenge to have it drive past the square. Here is my word blocks code:

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions!

Related Links

Robotics Activities for Kids
Science Activities for Kids
All Learning Activities

The post Spike Prime Challenge: Pushing an Object appeared first on ResearchParent.com.