Bee Bot Fun

Thanks to the fantastic Hutt Science centre, we were able to have a week trying out some coding and programming with Bee Bots and the junior syndicate.
Bee Bots are appealing, simple little robots that look like bees.  The boys use simple commands to control the robot and get it to move and follow directions.  They were instantly popular with all of our junior boys and even some of the older students were asking when they were going to have a turn.

It was a great opportunity for the boys to see how breaking things down into simple steps in a logical order can result in something working out.  As they worked through the challenges, they became more efficient at problem solving and thinking in a more logical and sequential way.

Using the Bee Bots the boys had lots of fun learning the first steps of programming.

Hutt STEMM Schools Challenge

Last Thursday I took four students to the Dowse Art Gallery to compete in the very first Hutt STEMM Schools Challenge.  It was a quiz for schools to compete in their knowledge about science, technology, engineering, mathematics and manufacturing.
Andrew, Toby, Sam and Max were up against nine other Year 7 and 8 teams from various schools in the Hutt Valley.

Four of the rounds consisted of a range of questions from 'How many bones are in a shark?' to 'What does H2O stand for?'  The boys did really well and it was a close race between them and one other school.  One other round involved the students using a range of skills.  They had to mix hot and cold water to as close as 37 degrees possible without using a thermometer, they had to cut a length of paper to as close to one meter without using any measuring device.  Andrew had to stop and start a blacked out stopwatch to as close to one minute - he did pretty well with a time of 59.83sec.


In the end the boys won the competition by just three points.  All the students from all of the schools looked like they enjoyed themselves and it was great to be in a room full of kids having fun with science.
The boys won a lovely cup and much to their excitement, a box of chocolates and some vouchers.

Thanks to Hutt Science for organising the quiz.