Robots K-2 Story oriented

K-2 Story-oriented arts and robots

Overview 

Goal: To excite K-2 about STEAM through fun activities, that let them associate learning with creativity and imagination.

Why Story-oriented? This age is rich in imagination, so good to connect robots with a story or puzzle. Whatever the robot does is part of a general story as a character or an object or lesson goal. Ex.s: Go to bridge on mat, Go to answer, Simple math or spelling, maze, etc.

Simple robots make a good introduction to following a sequence of commands = programming to solve a problem or present a solution. This is good as an introduction even for older students.

A=Arts in STEAM

• decorate the robot and surroundings to go with their story 
• via crafts, Legos, attachments or even 3D printed parts
• have to the robot movements drawn via a pen attachment

Overview of Robots

Programming Input

Button commands

• Press buttons to form a program sequence and press Go.
• Coding cards are used for planning.

Icon Blocks – like Scratch Jr
Word Blocks – like Scratch and Blockly

• Although reading “required” , some basic puzzle piece patterns may be still be usable.

Color based (Lego (pre-K-K) Coding Express, Ozobot)

• Robot runs over the color to read it in
• One color or color sequence indicating a programming action to happen

Programming levels

Each level adds a little more complexity. All levels here have been used with K-2.

Programming levels and inputs vary by robot.

1. 1 step at a time [“Turtle” robots] 

• Typical commands are:  forward, left, right, back (often harder),  go, erase
• Can use cards to show “program” steps
• Some “turtle” robots have helps for story telling like mats (2D) & objects (3D)
• Turtle robots became famous through Seymour Papert’s research at MIT in early computing education in mid-60s and early 70s.

2. Add sound and light (1 light, led matrix, etc)

• To add to their story
• Signal when reach a goal or sensor event 

3. Additional movements

• Non-90 degree turn via button
• Botley's 45 degree turn
• Note: Both Back and 45 degree turns are more advanced for this age
• Move motors more than 1 rotation (Spike Essential, Micro:bit)
• Usually icon blocks(Scratch Jr like) or word blocks (Scratch like)
• Motor Movements
• Animations  like a mouth, walking, amusement rides
• Micro:bit Baby Shark lesson 
• Most of Spike Essential example builds 

4. React to sensor events like their own senses:

• Obstacle (via distance or touch/crash sensors) [see, touch]
• Color [see]
• Loudness [hear]  (used less often)
• Reaction not limited to one kind of programming input
• Reaction is not specific to one type of programming inputs Ex.s
• Botley -buttons; 
• Lego Spike Essential – icon blocks,  
• VEX123 – word blocks

For K-2, line following is only for observation of what a robot can do.

K-2 Robot Competitions Overview

Lego – Spike Essential and competitions:  

• FLL Discover (preK-1st) 
• FLL Explorer Challenge (2nd-4th) 
• Lego supports younger than Kindergarten [Lego pre-K-K Coding Express,]

Vex 

• 123

Robot Descriptions

BeeBot 

Follow sequences of button push commands to a place of story-oriented mat 

• Coding cards and mats with various themes are available
• A simulation app is available
• Note a wide variety of similar toys are on the market currently.

Botley 2.0  

Unique and award winning because 

• Turtle robot with
• Obstacle detection
• When see obstacle then do special sequence of commands
• Good preparation for using sensors later
• 45 degree turns
• Line follower setting

Spike Essential 

• Story telling and building characters, vehicles, amusement park rides; 
• 3x3 LED matrix; 2 small motors; color and touch sensors 
• Can be programmed with Icon Blocks (ScratchJr like) or Word Blocks (Scratch like)

VEX 123 

• basic turtle buttons, with option use of blocks via an app. 
• There is a craft circle to easily attach crafts and arts to the robot. 
• Coding card and app with word blocks are available

Micro:bit lessons for K-2 

• Animation like Baby Shark shown 
• Programmed with basic word blocks

Ozobot 

• Follows color patterns that can be used as a programming language (patented) 
• Also supports Blockly

Lego Coding Express 

• A train which reacts to colored activity blocks between the tracks when it runs over them.

Homegrown turtle or color programmable

• Uses programmable robots
• Good project for older students to create for younger students.

Robot set considerations

What should be considered when choosing a robot set? 

• How many robots can be built?  1, 3, many
• What programming languages supported?
• What sensors included?

It is important  that a robot kit is flexible: allowing many robot builds; a variety of sensors; and multiple programming languages. Flexibility in the robot set keeps it useful as students grow.

These are discussed more below.

Overview

Robotics come in various sizes and shapes, but use same basic components of motors and sensors. 

Example: 2 robot models with 2 sample robots built from different kits.

• motorcycle:   small Micro:bit and bigger Lego Spike Prime
• driving base:  Lego Mindstorms Inventor (~Spike home) and larger older brother Lego EV3

These robots can all be used to teach basic movements,  sensing and reacting to their environments, or they can challenged to perform specific tasks. Data can be gathered from sensors and motors for evaluation.  Building and programming is learned. But for students it's more exciting to see the robots do what they told it to.

Robot Set Builds - more is better

It is important a robot kit is flexible allowing many robot builds.  Having a few specific builds is limiting.

All 3 robots used here allow multiple builds.  Spike Prime and older EV3 sets are both Lego.  Micro:bit motorcycle is built using the ElectroFreaks Wonder Build Kit and uses BBC Micro:bit as its computer controller.  Mindstorms Inventor is a home version of Spike Prime.

It's good if the building parts are something familiar and able to be reused.  Even Wonder Build Kit uses Lego compatible building parts.  Beyond introduction to robotics collecting compatible extra parts is useful for building competition robots. EV3 is no longer sold by Lego, but is still allowed in robotic competitions. If a school adds Spike Primes to EV3s, the building parts are compatible.  

So far robot sets do not allow interchanging motors and sensors because they have connectors specific to the computer controller and specific micro-code support.  The recent Raspberry Pi Build Hat add-on that allows Lego Spike sensors and motors is an exception. This allows using Raspberry Pi with Lego motors and sensors to build robots and additionally use extras, like the Raspberry Pi camera (more in a future post). 

Programming

At a minimum, programming support for following popular education languages should be supported:

• word blocks similar to puzzle piece Scratch language  
• (micro)Python

Sensors

Robot programming is event oriented and reacts to sensors. 

Basic sensors that should be supported are: 

• Distance sensor (usually ultrasound)
• Color or Light Intensity Sensor
• Touch or Crash sensor
• Sensor for exact turns [recommended]
• Gyro sensor OR
• Built-in Accelerometer often with motion sensing (tilting, falling)
• additional sensors can be useful
• Temperature, Sound Level, Humidity and Moisture sensors are common.

A display or LED matrix and sound output are also useful. 

Robots are fun for children and do not have to be specific to just one age or grade-level.