I am working with one of my Kindergarten teachers to create holiday VEX centers for students to use the day before Christmas break. Thought I would add some pictures of what I have so far and see what anyone else can come up with.
Center 1 - I used VEX GO/IQ pieces to create a Grinch to attach to the art ring. The Grinch will go around the field knocking over stacks of presents. (I was hoping to find those very tiny presents in a bag at the dollar store that you can use as ornaments on small trees).
Center 2 - I used VEX GO pieces to create a sleigh and attached it to the art ring with Rudolph. Rudolph will guide the sleigh through the field to visit/deliver presents to all of the children at the schools in our school district (which I have pictured on the field).
Center 3 - I printed a picture of the Polar Express train to attach to the art ring. The train will travel in sequence through the events from the book. Starting with the boy leaving his house until he receives the bell.
Center 4 - I created a field with coal and presents for students to code their 123 robot around the coal to get to the presents.
Any other creative holiday ideas out there?
@Aimee_DeFoe @Audra_Selkowitz @Desiree_White-Price @Danielle_McCoy
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These are wonderful!! You could reuse the reindeer with nearly any activity, and call it âReindeer Gamesâ - so the kids have to code the âreindeerâ to do things like drive to words that rhyme with âsnowâ, or push the snowballs (pom poms/cotton balls) into place to make a snowman, or drive to solve simple sums.
Iâll let you know what else I come up with!
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Tina, how about an âElf on the Shelf?â You could have the elf code to do âkindness activitiesâ that the students come up with.
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@Danielle_McCoy that reminds me of the âKindness Countdown Calendarâ I used to do with my Kindergarten class as a âcountdownâ to winter break. I made up envelopes with acts of kindness we could do either individually or as a class, for each other, our families, or our school community. Each day weâd open one up and be challenged to incorporate that dayâs act of kindness into our day.
They ranged from little things - like make a kind message for someone in our class - to bigger things like caroling around the school, or one year, we even surprise decorated the Principalâs office for the holidays!
@Tina_Dietrich another idea I had for 123 or GO, would be to have students use the robots to help them retell their favorite holiday themed story. There were always almost too many great holiday books to read in the weeks leading up to winter break, and kids had their favorites from home too. This would be a way for them to build a character from the story on the Art Ring (or with GO pieces) and use it to help tell their favorite story to the class. You can work with the school library to help studentsâ choose a book, and then they can create what goes on the 123 Field that relates to their story, and the character on the Art Ring, and they get practice with storytelling and reading comprehension! With GO, they could build a part of the story, or the characters, and use them to tell the story, or code the Code Base to move through plot points on the Field.
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Audra, I have seen and heard a good bit about kindness 101, a YouTube series from Steve Hartman. The videos would go perfectly with the calendar idea! Then to bring in the robotics component, students could code to their kindness card or activity!
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Ooh! Iâll have to check that series out 
Thanks for sharing! And I love the idea of coding their own Kindness Coder card - please share those projects if you try it
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