Luke just turned 7. For his birthday he really wanted the Lego Mindstorms NXT. It is quite pricey, yet we found the NXT (not the 2.0) on sale for $199.99. He decided he would use money that he has saved and has received as gifts to pay for half. The kids have still been using our family bank system, which they are each in charge of balancing their deposits and withdrawls. It works wonderfully.
Anyway, today was another BIG snow day. All of these snowy days are great for us. We actually get MORE school done since we have all day and are snowed in. At this rate we can be done with school very early. As it is, Grace has already finished 3rd grade SpellWell and both kids are about a month away from finishing their Math U See curriculum.
Well, since we had so much time we got to set up the NXT. Luke did a robotics camp in town this past summer, and will again this coming summer. He loved it! With the NXT you can build various robots (you can create your own or use templates). Then you use the computer software and can program your robot to do various activities. This is so fun for Luke. Today we worked on getting the robot to go across the living room, turn into the kitchen, turn again into the dining room, and back to the living room. You can also program it to “say” different things. What was great about it was, that Luke had to figure out the distances he wanted it to go, and then figure out how many seconds to program the robot to go in each direction based on the distances he measured. I can see this really becoming a huge part of school Talk about hands on math, science, and computers! I can’t wait to see the elaborate creations he will make in the months and years to come!
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