Here’s a fun, collaborative idea to bring some holiday cheer to your STEM classes! This could work with GO or IQ.
Challenge your students to create a classwide collaborative holiday light show, using a combination of classroom materials and GO pieces. Add LED Bumpers and code them to flash a fun green and red holiday pattern. Code a Code Base robot to drive through the display! You can even add the Eye Sensor to trigger the display as the robot drives by, if you want.
I made a little prototype of this idea using what I had on hand, which included some fairy lights and a couple of light-up holiday necklaces. If you use fairy lights, definitely use short strings! I only had 9ft strings and they were honestly a bit of a pain. Anyhow, with a classroom full of supplies, there are so many possibilities for what you could do with this idea!
I’d start this activity by asking students if they have ever been to a holiday light display, and making a list of the kinds of things they might see at one. Choose one to use as an example, and have the class think about how they might create it using a combination of GO pieces and art supplies from the classroom. Then, narrow your list down as a class, and then assign groups to make different parts of the display. For example, one group codes the LED Bumper on the tree exhibit, another codes the Code base to drive through the display, etc.
Students can add multiple LED Bumpers to a Brain and create projects for them to flash in a red and green pattern. Just be sure they choose ‘Custom Robot’ when they are configuring the GO Brain for that project!
If you have a nearby class that is using VEX 123, invite them to come see the display and to code their robots to drive through the display too!
If you try this out, post here and let us know how you made this idea your own!
