Robot Week
- Julie Shamblin
- Aug 21, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 22, 2024
A Robot and Artificial Intelligence unit for homeschool, worldschool or just for fun.
This one was requested by the kids. I was a little apprehensive because building things with my kids is not where I shine as a parent, but we had a lot of fun dipping our toes into the world of robots. The girls got few robot-type gifts for their birthday and this was a perfect time to check those out.
Printables
Here's this week's info, all wrapped up into an easy-to-read printable. Click here for the full color copy and click here for a low-ink black and white version.
On the Dining Room Wall
Pictures of a few famous robots including Atlas and Spot from Boston Dynamics that we learned about on YouTube.
A print out of "Edmund de Belamy", the most expensive work of AI art.
Books
One from each category plus an assortment of picture books is usually just perfect.
Not all book series are as good as the next. Get the scoop on some of our favorites here.
Base Non-Fiction Books:
Read every word or simply flip through and reach what catches your eye.
You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Robots! We love this series. It's an easy book to pick up and put down for quick, 3-5 minute reading sessions.
DKFindOut! Robots (We mostly just flipped through this one and read what looked interesting)
Base Fiction Chapter Book:
(Some of these books are part of a series but all of them work as standalone books.)
The Wild Robot #1 There are three books in this series and it hadn't been my intention to read them all but they were so good that we did.
Can You Survive an Artificial Intelligence Uprising? (You Choose book) What if computers and robots get too advanced? Be warned that you usually die in about half the endings of these books.
Picture Books
Library inventories vary so much with picture books. Rather than wasting time tracking down specific ones, I like to do keyword searches and just grab what's available.
Search these keywords: Robots, Artificial Intelligence, Coding.
We liked theses:
Rox's Secret Code (By Maria Lecocq)
Animal Robots (By Erika Shores)
Things to Watch
Me & My Robot A PBS special about enthusiastic young roboticists competing for gold at the World Robot Olympiad.
Interactive Learning
So many options this week! Hands on activities aren't usually my forte but we tried really hard this week to build some cool robots.
Giggleway Electric Motor Robotic Science Kits Lots of building, lots of playing but no programming. Parental help was definitely needed here but it wasn't quite as intense as other things we've built. Fun factor once they are complete is pretty good!
Sphero Mini App-Enabled Programmable Robot Ball Less building more programming. There's a learning curve to this one but I think it has a lot of potential. I also like that we only have one robot ball but it's easy to share since you can work on your code on your device and then take a turn with connecting to the ball.
Sillbird STEM 12-in-1 Education Solar Robot Toys We haven't opened this one yet. I'll try and remember to update once we do.
Field Trip Ideas
Our local library has a space where you can go and play with Dash robots. It might be worth seeing if something like this is available near you.
End of Week Movie Night Ideas
So many options this week. There are way more than listed here!
Wall-E (G, 2008) This is such an amazing movie. WALL-E is so loveable and the message is a good one.
Big Hero Six (PG, 2014) We didn't actually watch this one but people seem to like it.
Robots (PG, 2005) I haven't seen this one in years but I remember it being cute.
Segue Ideas... Outer space
Wrap Up
This week was a very hands-on week and I'm optimistic that we'll continue to play with some of our programming robots and continue to learn code. This would work great for a robot and artificial intelligence homeschool unit.
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