Lego Mindstorms Camp or Heaven for Little Boys

If you have boys, then you most likely have Legos. Not that girls don’t play with them, too, of course. I have fond memories of the Lego Castle I had when I was a little girl. But boys and Legos just seem to go hand in hand, don’t they? All I know is that approximately 1599 of our 1600 square foot house is covered in Legos. So when a fellow homeschooling mom tipped me off about a FREE Lego camp being offered at one of the local libraries, I dropped everything to be on my computer at exactly one minute after registration opened to get my oldest signed up.

Okay, I didn’t exactly drop everything, since registration was in the morning and I was on my computer anyway
checking Facebookdoing important things. But still.
The week-long camp was called Robotronics and gave kids a chance to work with Lego Mindstorms. If you aren’t familiar with Mindstorms,  here’s the description from the Lego Education site:

“This set allows students to build and program real-life robotic solutions. Provides cross-curricular opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math. Allows for creativity in design.  Enables students to explore the world of engineering by building complex control systems.”

Basically, Mindstorms are Legos that can be built into all kinds of robots and then programmed using the computer and software, to do any number of things.
Sounds good, right?

Except for the part where the set costs almost $300 (yikes).

I’m hoping to get this set for my boys one day soon, though, because I think it will be worth every penny. Also, my oldest is ten and there are three more boys after him that will be able to use it – I’m pretty sure I’ll get my money’s worth out of it. I believe that homeschooling affords us the advantage of being able to fully encourage our children’s unique interests while fostering their love of learning.  As I mentioned, my boys are interested in all things Lego. They are also very interested in science, technology and engineering – which would make the Mindstorms a great addition to their education.  The Lego Education website has a wide variety of sets and curriculum available for many different ages, so if you’ve never checked it out I’d encourage you to do so.  There’s plenty of low-cost and even free things, too (like the activity starters).

What I’m thinking of doing is (winning the lottery/hitting up the grandparents) and getting the Mindstorms set for my boys, along with possibly this Robotics for Engineering Homeschool Curriculum or this Classroom Activities for the Busy Teacher, which has 10 weeks of lesson plans for robotics.   I think my ten and eight year-old would be able to use it right away and the six year old would learn a lot watching them.

I’ve also been talking with some other moms about starting a group that would meet once or twice a month and maybe use the Lego Mindstorms set and lesson plans together. This way, we only need one or two sets between us, but many kids could still benefit.

During the week of camp, the boys (and one girl!) worked in teams to design, build and program a robot. At the end of the week, the teams competed by either racing their creations or battling them against each other. The green team and blue team (pictured above) each built a robot that could shoot (small, marble size balls) and hit the other robot in a place that would dismantle it.
It was a very exciting battle.

It went on like that for awhile (again, I was holding a toddler while taking pictures and video).

And then it ended with a tie.

Do you have kids interested in Lego Mindstorms? Do you use anything like it as part of your curriculum?

~ Dori