A STEM partnership between Oak Ridge and The Q is Silqent, an EHS Robotics Team

Week 2

GO, HEXBUGS, GO! Hexbugs came to life in our Q Cares class on Friday. These mini robots that behave like bugs, wiggled through mazes created by our Kindergarten scientists. Legos, polydrons, books, and paper tubes were formed into pathways. The goal was to 1) work together in small groups to design and build a maze, 2) get our hexbugs to follow our created paths, and 3) test, redesign, and retest while making predications and using what we learned in our prior trials. In addition, these mini robots served as an introduction to the importance of being able to program a robot for control of direction and movement. Since the Hexbugs are not programmable, the only way to harness how and where they move is to put up barriers—our mazes. It can be frustrating! Next time, we’ll explore simple robots that CAN be programmed so we can see the benefits of “telling” our robot where to go vs. leaving it to chance.

Ask your child...  What was the design of your maze? Draw it for me.  Did you have to make changes to your maze so the Hexbug could travel through it? Tell me what you did to make it easier for your Hexbug to travel through.  Would it have been easier to “tell” your Hexbug where to go and how to get through your maze? What would you have “told” it if it could understand?

I’m bored...what can we do? The Minneapolis Institute of Arts offers a FREE hands-on art immersion experience each month for families at it’s Family Day. This month, explore “Art Circus” on Sunday, Dec. 12th from 11:00 am—5:00 pm. Clown around the museum, try out circusworthy skills, and make circus-inspired works of art. No registration is necessary. If you decide to go, we’d love to see your works of art! Bring them to our next Q Cares class! For more information, go to www.artsmia.org

You may notic Cares scientist e we use pictures of our Q s tures you see ar in each newsletter. The picactivity so they e from the previous week’s line printed. It don’t match the story or head the newsletter happens like this so we can ge class together. to you the day we have our t pictures from ouThis week, you’ll see r “Ramp” activ ity. Next week, yo u’ll see our Hex bugs.