Welcome back to the blog!
Last weekend, we celebrated our first Night of the Robots event of the year. Kids in K-5th grade from all around the Austin area gathered and intermingled to discover their passion for STEM while having lots of fun along the way. With stations from robot demos to arts and crafts, children were able to find an event that entertained them no matter their interests.
When the Night-of-the-Robotees arrived, we gave them some time to socialize and connect if they knew each other from school. We provided pizza courtesy of Domino’s and fed them to ensure that the kiddos had enough energy to do the rigorous activities to come.
After that, they went to their first activity, which varied based on which group they were in. Kids that went to do physical activity played small games of Simon Says and Captain’s Coming to get them a little more calmed down. This prepared them for the Lego station where they got the chance to build and manufacture some of their own creations through Legos that represented individual pieces of a robot or other built project.
Then, they got the chance to use electricity in practice, using electrical sets to simulate how engineers manage their way around wires to create functional machines. They also got the chance to practice coding logic in a board game that used simple instructions to control a turtle on a board game. Although rudimentary, this showed them how logic is usually the majority of the hard work in programming.
The kids got even more activity with our robot demos, which got to show off the functionality of our robot through a fun game of dodgeball. After dodgeball, they got to hang out and do arts and crafts on our paper pumpkins that they got to take home. This gave them the chance to chill and hang out before ending the event by watching some movies out on the big screen.
Overall, Night of the Robots was a great event to spread the name of STEM across our youngsters in our area. We hope that we could inspire some of the attendees to reach out into the fields of engineering and maybe even join a robotics team once they get to high school.
See you next time on… the ausTIN CANs!
