Hi everyone! My name is Brynn - I’m a VEX educator and work with both VEX GO and IQ platforms. I started teaching VEX this past September to grades 3-8 at a school district in the Pittsburgh area. I also coach an after school VEX IQ competition team. I enjoyed meeting many of you at the VEX educators conference!
I am reaching out for ideas/recommendations for VEX lessons to do with the kids during our summer camp. TLDR: please pitch any VEX related summer camp ideas you have!
Our camp will be for grades K-8 and last 3 hours a day for 4 weeks. We will split the kids into 3 age groups and rotate them through 3 groups on the hour. I’ll have 15-20 kids per group and have access to as many IQ or GO kits as needed (although no computer access).
The first week, our theme is space. I am thinking of doing some sort of community building space themed activity with them the first day. Another day I’m thinking some kind of ‘space walk’. The kids could decorate a VEX tile to make it look like constellations; we will gradually connect all their tiles together. They’ll have to complete the challenge of navigating a pre built BaseBot through the space walk.
Other activities throughout the camp will include planting (designing, decorating pots and planting seeds) as well as an egg drop challenge. I’d love ideas for any VEX tie-ins here too!
One last idea to pitch: I am also considering having different stations set up some days so students can choose to go to a building or driving station. Thanks all for reading this and sharing your ideas!
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Hi @Brynn_Harshbarger, these are great ideas! It sounds like you’re on a good track so far. Here are some other ideas to help you as you get started planning:
- For your younger K-2 kids, check out the Discovery Activities for VEX GO as a way to get them started without having to follow more complex build instructions. They are simple activities, designed to build spatial reasoning skills, and only use a small selection of pieces from the Kit. Here’s a VEX Library article that describes them in more detail.
- Since you’re thinking about doing some space-themed activities, the VEX GO Day and Night STEM Lab could be a fun addition! The first model of the rotation of the Earth doesn’t need code to run, so you could have students build that and then add onto it to represent things like the moon, stars, or planets. Instead of using the sensor in the second Lab, you could try recreating the same effect with flashlights.
- I think having building vs driving options is great - perhaps for the youngest kids, you might want to keep them to driving pre-built robots through mazes or story-themed maps, so that they don’t get distracted by tiny pieces. You can also connect your IQ (2nd gen) Controllers to a VEX GO Brain so that you can drive the Code Base with a physical controller. Here’s an article with that info, if that’s helpful
- Last but not least, check out camps.vex.com! There are some great pre-curated and themed resources using VEX materials that could be a good place to gather ideas.
I’d love to talk more about your camp setup and help you plan. You can schedule a 1-on-1 Session in PD+ and we can hop on a video chat to talk more specifically about what you have planned, where you’re looking to fill gaps, and help you come up with fun ideas to keep your STEM Camp exciting and engaging for everyone!
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Hi @Brynn_Harshbarger Thank you for this great topic!
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Hi Audra!
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response - this is very helpful! I just scheduled a 1-on-1 for next week and am looking forward to brainstorming further.
I did not know you could connect a GO brain to an IQ controller - how cool! Good suggestion on the day and night STEM lab; the camp resources are helpful to explore.
I’ll share an updated post once our VEX activities are finalized and a reflection update to let everyone know how the activities worked with our camp kids.
Thank you!
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So glad this helped! I look forward to chatting more next week
