2nd Grade Lego Club Year plan

This year I am trying to be more organized in organizing the lesson plans and have them transition over time towards the Lego Robotics topic that the children will be eligible to participate in next year in Grade 3.

Luckily this year I have a parent that has volunteered to help that has followed a similar path as I have in teaching lego clubs with his older son over time. He has suggested many great ideas for the year!

Our year goes from October 2011 to June 2012. I have listed the topics below by month:

October: General Build a place: Children chose to build an Air Force base.

November: NASA Calls for Astronauts:  What will they use?

December: Creationary

January: Skyscraper Challenge

February: Longest Bridge Span Challenge

March: Intro to Gears?

April: Lego Robotics Intro  (Basics about the robots - building them and getting to know about the sensors and such)

May: Lego Robotics Tug of war (One month, we can talk about how gears work and then have two teams do a tug of war between two robots (depending on attendance, we could have four teams and do an elimination tournament).  We could discuss gearing for power and torque. )

June: Lego Robotics - Drag Race (we gear for speed and have a drag race between two robots.)

This is a draft schedule, so it may change as we go.

Planet Colonization Building Challenge

Building Challenge:

We have arrived on a new planet (Terra) to colonize it. What would we need to build to live there? We will build in groups the different pieces of our new planet's infrastructure that we need to create our world.

Definition: Infrastructure - the fundamental facilities and systems serving a country,city, or area, as transportation and communication systems,power plants, and schools. (from www.dictionary.com)


Lesson Plan

1. (10-15 min) Show and Tell
2. (15 min) Discussion:
1. Describe the Building Challenge (see above)
2. Define Infrastructure (see above)
3. Discuss what a colonist would need to survive on a new planet. 
4. Perhaps show pictures of Champaign and Urbana from when settlers first arrived here. 
5. Make a list on a whiteboard of the different tools, places, etc that they would need.
3. (20 min) Build: Break into groups of 2-3 people and choose one of the items from the list to build.
4. (25 min) Build Terra's infrastructure by putting our creations together and describing them to each other
5. (5 min) Cleanup
6. (10 min) Parts draft

Materials:

1. Lots of lego bricks
2. Pictures of our town when it was first settled
3. Description of our new planet (perhaps pictures)
1. Same type of atmosphere as earth
2. There are local herd animals that are a cross between a cow and an elephant.
3. The landing site is in a climate similar to Champaign-Urbana, IL
4. The land near the landing site is heavily forested and there is a very large lake (three times the size of Lake Michigan) a 15 minute walk from the landing site.
5. There is a Governor of the planet who is equivalent to our President but he is in office for 5 years.
6. We have brought cows, sheep, horses, and chickens with us. In addition to 100 seeds of 50 different types of food crops (corn, wheat, squash, etc.).