My “Intro to Programming” kids attended a “Learning Day” event today. It was meant to give them (and other homeschoolers) an opportunity show off what they have been learning. It didn’t work out that way – the person that was supposed to let everyone into the build didn’t show. After waiting for a while, the dozen of so families that showed up choose to make the best of a bad situation and setup their displays and projects on the lawn. We managed to get some space on a concrete entryway so the ‘bots could run, but MindStorm’s classic roverbot doesn’t run well on rough surfaces and the linefollow code we created didn’t like the bright sunlight.

The good thing about kids is they don’t always know when to be disappointed. After messing with ‘bots for a while, a challenge was issued between my group and another group with a MindStorm (I’m not sure who threw down the gauntlet first ;-). An impromptu round of BattleBots ensued

Since we lost 1 round and tied three, I’m betting I can motivate the guys to work on their programming/engineering skills before the next time we play sumo-bots.

The lesson I learned today is that given the choice writing cool programs and writing cool programs that allow you to attack your opponent and destroy his ‘bot, any group of pre-teen boys will go with door number two every time!