ENTERING ROBOTICS

IT IS SUMMER. School is out again, and at least one grandchild is at my house. COVID has tired itself out and we are no longer locked in or locked down. The child we had so much success (?) with three years ago under mandatory pressure is that much older and a different beast. Thinking harder and more elevated for their sake, a grandparent has to accommodate the scene. Outside of ROBLOX and MINECRAFTING entertainment could easily fall to a fail. ENTER ROBOTICS.

What child doesn't want his own playmate, that he assembled? A playmate that jumps to his command and( with any real success at the skill needed) promises more like him. That's it! PROCREATION out of granma's pocket for jobs well done and brain stems increased for the effort. Teddy bears and Lamby tucked away into the attic, I subscribed to a mail-ordered hoard of robots. We start with the SOLAR POWERED. One out of six robots in one box and a handful of encouragement... "have patience"... "not too hard on that little part and it will go in"... encouragement and a brownie or two will be the something to tide the time over. By day five a robot is done. Thanks to early LEGO training and the precursor of BIG BLOCKS with a few lessons on helping dad assemble furniture from local "big box" stores and we have a very confident young "man to be." Soon enough we will be back at giving drone number two a trial!

The mail-ordered package came as a surprise but the promise of getting a few new skills added on to LEGO assembly, mechanized kits; and the now solar kits available became a motivator. The goal of our child, as with other children interested in STEM-related learning, CODING, and STEAM with remote mechanized crafts is to join groups at their designated education site or clubs and associations studying robotic engineering for future societies.

STEM LEARNING EDUCATION begins as early as prekindergarten with the promotion of skills to develop dexterity... manual manipulation of items before them and for assembly or sorting of said items. Those skills are advanced by encouraging compiling items into replicas of a visual cue. The child is given several blocks that he is expected to connect together to create a duplicate of a provided image. Later expectations of prekindergarten and elementary STEM include creating their own ideal toy from provided blocks. With several items such as MEGA BLOCKS... a large version of LEGO Creator Blocks designed for small hands. The older a child becomes, he is expected to have improved manipulation (dexterity) skills, therefore blocks are presented in smaller forms, and creations from those blocks presented become more complex. With more complexity of design projects comes the addition of mobilization of the blocks presented to the user at EXPLORE level of ninth through twelfth grades and beyond on to professional development in science and engineering focus.

It is all so beautiful to have a child with an interest and to have a means for developing that interest toward a brighter future. The problem with developing or encouraging that enhanced future in a nine-year-old is that the BEING OF AGE NINE is the first cause. In alternate words, we hit upon a snag in progress. As with most nine-year-olds tempers and following parental rituals as requested tend to odd parallels. The SPACE DOG ROBOT may not walk for a bit. Our engineer is being "put off" from toys "until." So until then happens, consider this a freeze-frame. The engineer is in a bit of a spot for a while.