Indoor adventure

Preschool students enjoyed a warm, indoor rainstorm at the end of Tuesday’s music and movement class, courtesy of the mirror ball in the Wales Theater.

It was eleven degrees outside, and the forecast was for indoor recess for the younger students, so teachers were be getting students up and moving their bodies every chance they had.

Down the hall, their classmates were sprawled on the floor, starting the new year programming robots in the Early Childhood IDEA Lab.

 

Students paired up to give the BeeBots step-by-step directions from the starting spot - the green dot - to the final red dot.

 

BeeBots follow instructions well, but like any computer, they can only do what humans teach them to do.

The lesson, then, reveals the sometimes-tricky work engineers must do to break down a task into simple steps.

 

After a few tries, the students stumbled on another lesson - there is more than one path between the dots, and after each attempt, they get a chance to improve their design and try again. More on the design engineering process in Preschool

What does this collaborative engineering look like in Gordon’s Middle School? Come get a look at the after school robotics teams’ two tournaments this month. One team is headed to the state championship is Saturday the 13th at Roger Williams University in Bristol, with the spectator portion starting at noon. The other will be at the invitational, Saturday the 20th, at Edward Martin Middle School in East Providence, from nine am to noon.