Emme built and programmed her first Mindstorms robot this past weekend.
\nShe worked for hours on the construction of the Roverbot and finished all 7 of the introductory and advanced workshops in the Robotics Invention System 2.0 series.<\/p>
\nShe had to rebuild the Roverbot a couple of times, and she refused help, saying “I can do it”. She was right.
\nI watched this with amazement: this is a child who can’t, CAN’T, keep her room neat, who has meltdowns in public places, who sometimes zones out into her own world and who is unconsciously “in the way” from time to time.
\nThe last one is hard to explain. As evidenced by her construction of the robot, she has good fine motor skills, but she doesn’t seem to have a sense of personal space, either her own or other people’s.
\nI was VERY proud of her. She took on a tough job and stuck with it, even when the robot fell apart, or she found that she’d put in the wrong piece, or put in the right piece the wrong way.
\nMindstorms is finely crafted, but the pieces are tiny, and the kits were in a mess. I helped a little by sorting everything out and helping her find the right parts, sometimes difficult because there weren’t any extras of a particular piece that she needed. The job took a lot of patience and self-discipline.
\nWhen the robot was built, she sat in front of the computer for probably 2 hours, going through all the lessons herself, learning enough that she could write her own program at the end of it.
\nShe wanted to show the robot to her family and of course, her little brother decided he wants to build one, too. I’m not sure exactly how this is going to work; he’s only six. So, I’ll have to look in the Constructopedia to find a model that is a) simple, b) interesting looking and c) doesn’t require pirating any parts from Emme’s Roverbot.
\nIn other words, a lot more hands-on and maintenance than Emme needed: she really did complete all of it herself. Not bad for a 9 year old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emme built and programmed her first Mindstorms robot this past weekend. She worked for hours on the construction of the Roverbot and finished all 7 of the introductory and advanced workshops in the Robotics Invention System 2.0 series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}