A-maze-ing! Coding LEGO!

Chelsea, Samuel, Lupin, Daniel, Koah, Corbyn and Kai being a-maze-ing!

Recently Gemma shared an idea to help us learn how to write code for our drones and robotics by making a maze with LEGO! Before joining our team Gemma was the OSHC Director at another service and had used the following resource and activities during her time there. Gemma is in her final stages of completing her teaching qualification and we feel very fortunate to have someone with her experience working with us! You can check out the excellent blogpost she recommends here: Research Parent.

This afternoon Gemma set up a provocation table with LEGO blocks and challenged the children to create a maze, and a character to navigate its way through to the end. She observed that many children were great at making a maze and playing within it, but didn’t quite comprehend the idea that a maze has a beginning and an end, and a bit of a challenge in the middle!

The LEGO maze activities that Research Parent has created describe four levels of difficulty for those who are interested in coding. Achieving the first level is a challenge that we’ve realised in our first drone sessions- to think from a point of reference other than your own. When manually flying a drone, some children pilot from their perspective, rather than the drone’s, making it difficult to navigate and land on the Mission Pad.

We’re going to focus on this and the other learning objectives found in Research Parent’s blogpost to provide children with opportunities to flex their a-maze-ing skills!

We’ve been brainstorming ideas and Gemma has come up with the following gems:

• Maze puzzles and print-outs

• Left and right activities and games

• Obstacle course- direct your partner with left and right, up and down, and back and forwards directions

• Watch the film The Labyrinth! (How has this film dated?)

Help us brainstorm! What ideas, games or activities can you think of that will help us to think from a point of reference other than you own?

I love it!