Today we made solar ovens. We were going to make hot dogs and have a picnic this afternoon, but St Louis has turned into Seattle - it rains constantly. This same time last year, it was 100 degrees outside. I know, because when we made the solar ovens last summer, we said we could just fry the hot dogs on the hood of my car. Now everyone is wearing sweaters to class.
To plug the "hole" in my curriculum, I assigned them a robot challenge. They had to build a robot that could push all the little LEGO bricks out of a big square. They were supposed to use their light sensors to detect the dark tape outlining the square, but several teams just made really wide pushers. I guess that's thinking out of the box, though some of them got zinged by their own design. When the robot turned around, those extra wide pushers ended up pushing some the the LEGOs back inside the square.
