Build the Jungle Robot during our afterschool program for 2014!

Jungle Robot is Built Over Multiple Classes

Here is an excellent example of how a class with RobotCity develops over the course of six to twelve weeks. Some of the DIY kits students build take around three hours to complete!

Afterschool Offsite Classes Run One Hour

While some of the classes offered in store run more than one hour all of our offsite classroom programs run one hour in length.

Obviously, some really cool robots are going to take longer than one hour to build. The Jungle Robot from OWI is a primary example.

“Now my son in the robot class for older students didn’t bring home a robot today but my daughter in the younger class did. Why?” -Parent

Different classes are on different schedules. The simple DIY robotics kits that can be built to completion in one hour or less are taken home the same day!

Students building the more advanced robots work for one hour and then place all of the parts for their robot back into their bag which is turned in at the end of the one hour class. Those robots come back to the shop for storage until the following week when students continue their robot building.

Our after school instructors have an included build schedule along with their daily talking points. Let’s take a look at one of those.

Schedule for Building Jungle Robot

• Day One- complete gearbox (pages 18-20)
• Day Two- complete through wiring (pages 21-25)
• Day Three- complete arm version of robot (page 27)

While we do have a standard and schedule for completion, we also treat every classroom with the unique attention it deserves. Sometimes if classes are especially large we allow for an extra week for students to complete their robots. In addition, occasionally robots are damaged (wires snap, cranks break, etc.). These robots are brought back to the store for repair and return within a week to two weeks depending on the damage at hand.

“It’s good that you have a schedule for building but I am wondering what kinds of things my child is learning in the program.” -Parent

Revisiting the core words of our mission “education” and “entertainment” is a great idea at this point.

RCW Students Learn While Having Fun

Building the Jungle Robot is just one project that students will complete for Fall 2014 and it’s super cool!

We use this robot to introduce students into the concept of the link mechanism and how it is used in converting certain types of motion into other desired types of motion.

All instructors come equipped with their daily “talking points.”

Here is an example of the vocabulary included in the talking points worksheet for the Jungle Robot:

• ROTATIONAL MOTION
• OSCILLATING MOTION
• LINK MECHANISM
• PC BOARD
• SOUND SENSOR
• VARIABLE RESISTOR

Not only do students become familiar with these terms over the course of the associated build weeks their knowledge of these concepts are reinforced by seeing them in action, demonstrated by a robot they built with their own two hands.

“That’s cool!” -Student

Thanks for reading the RobotCity blog. Feel free to leave a comment about your questions regarding any of the robots for Fall 2014 including the cool duel-mode Jungle Robot!