Memories of a kindergarten robot inquiry: "What are real robots like?"

When one student’s paper robot was destroyed by another student, we endeavoured to build a STRONG robot, and learned a lot about real robots along the way! Cross-curricular connections to math (geometry), language, dance, and phys-ed. 

Read the full story below, including reflections about our attempt to infuse more math and language learning into this inquiry.

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Memories of a robot inquiry: “What are real robots like?”

The Spark:  Some students made paper robots at the craft table one day. Another student ripped one of the paper robots, much to the creator’s dismay. The robot-makers wanted to make STRONG robots that would not break. We assembled a team to design a plan to build a strong robot.

What are real robots made of?

“Real robots need to be made of metal and wood and probably bricks.”

“They have tin foil to be shiny.”

“We need hot glue.”

“We could make a robot with a balloon head and a headband and put on antennas.”

“It needs buttons and maybe wheels.”

“We could make a robot with wood from my house.”

We worked together to write a letter to the librarian, asking if she had any strong materials in the STEAM room that we could use for our robot. We also gathered library books about robots. Students and families became very excited and began sending a variety of interesting items from home. 

We learned . . .real robots can be made of many different materials, and can be many different shapes and sizes. We sorted our materials in various ways. We wrote a list of all the materials we had collected, then divided the materials fairly for two different construction teams to share. On our plans and on our real robots, we labelled all the materials and identified the 2D and 3D shapes we used (geometry connections). We named our two robots Beep Bop and Pom Pom. As a class, we wrote a funny fiction story about the adventures of Beep Bop and Pom Pom. 

After making the big, strong robots together, we made plans and constructed individual robots using recycling materials, and then we made plans to build small robot toys using a variety of shapes. Our grade 8 learning buddies helped us make the robot toys using the 3D printer! We wrote thank you cards to the buddies.

Students noticed that the robots we constructed could not DO anything. (“It’s because we didn’t put batteries in.”)

What do real robots DO?

Theories:

“Some robots can shoot fire.”

“Some robots can swim.”

“Their antennas tell them what’s in front of them.”

“Some robots shoot ice.”

“Some robots have buttons for their powers.”

We looked at nonfiction books about robots from the library and learned that real robots do many different things, like cooking, building, exploring dangerous places, and going to space. 

During outdoor learning time, we built Duplo robots to do imaginary ‘work’ in our forest, like digging, climbing, exploring, and cooking. Every day, we wrote about our memories in our outdoor learning journals.

We also learned that some real robots can do fun things like kicking a ball and dancing. A student suggested we choreograph a robot dance to a techno song he liked (“because the music sounds like robots”). We also played robot games in the gym.

We invented an imaginary ‘robot alphabet’ that helped us learn vowel sounds. Each consonant in our alphabet can be used to make robot sounds by using different vowels in the middles and a ‘p’ on the end! (E.g. “bap, beep, bip, bop, bup, boop.”)

A visitor from the Innisfil Public Library came to our class and brought some real robots to show us, and our school librarian let us play with Dash and Dot robots, which was a fantastic end to our robot inquiry.

Reflections: 

We were pleased to have found a way to incorporate some math (geometry) and more language (reading, writing) into this inquiry, in addition to arts and phys-ed components. We’d also extended and sustained it for longer than our previous inquiry. We realized that having solid knowledge of all Kindergarten curriculum expectations would be key for continuing to find ways to creatively insert curriculum content into students’ ongoing learning experiences in meaningful, memorable ways.