Today was the last day of Gavin's robotics camp so we got to go to the open house at the end of the day to see all the things he's been working on all week.  We were all very impressed!

But first, Adelaide looked so cute taking Gavin to camp that we couldn't resist stopping to take a few pictures.  I don't think anyone had a prettier little sister take them to camp this morning!

Gavin's day at camp was broken into modules.  In the first module, the kids were broken into groups of five or six and they had to create a virtual world by building avatars.  Gavin's avatar was a knight - hence the tin can!  He was the only one who made his out of a can!  Anyway, then they made a map of the town that the avatars live in thinking about all the things you need in a town and then each group made a store - making the things that went in their store (using items like felt, cloth scraps, pipe cleaners, coffee filters, etc.)  I should just mention that they had everyone bring recycleable stuff to camp on the first day so that's what the kids used for their creations all week.  Anyway, Gavin's groups' store had a clothing store with pants and socks they cut out of cloth and a sporting goods store with bats, balls and golf clubs made out of pipe cleaners, etc.  Then to build the economy in their town they went around and bought items from other stores for their avatar.  Gavin got a satellite dish but I think he thought it was a shield although he called it a satellite dish but I'm not sure he knows what a satellite dish is.

The nice thing about this camp is that the leaders really didn't help out a whole lot other then by asking questions and letting the kids figure out what they need and what would work best so the kids really got to work together to find solutions to the scenario without adults taking over the process.

Here's Gavin explaining what they did.

Gavin showing me the map of the town.

And showing me his group's store.

The next module was building a robot.  I had heard a lot about this project because Gavin's robot was falling apart the first two days of camp and he was getting frustrated because the teacher wouldn't help him other then ask him questions to get him (Gavin) to try and figure out why it was falling apart.  But, Wednesday went better.  He said he was able to get it to stand up but when it moved it would fall over.  Today when he showed it to us it worked perfectly and he is very proud of his robot!

Here he is getting it to work.

You can kind of see the propeller spinning and the robot hops around the table.

The boys were having robot wars with their robots which Austin, and the boys involved, really enjoyed!  The nice thing about making the kids figure out how to make the robots work by themselves, is that when one of the robots was put out of commission during the battle, the kids were able to fix their own robots without help.

Not bad for Styrofoam, golf tees, tape and a battery!

I think building the robot was the best thing Gavin did this week.  We talked about how inventors don't just sit down and build something, but that it can take years before they get it right and they just have to keep working at it and trying different things until it works.  We also talked about how everybody's robot looked different but they all worked (hopping around the table with the spinning propeller). Since Gavin tends to get frustrated when he doesn't get something right away, and he likes things to be just-so, we have been working on both these concepts lately and the robot project was a great hands on way to get those points across.

The last module was building a balloon launcher.  Unfortunately, they were out of balloons by the time we got out there so we didn't get to see it in action but Gavin's team had set up a pulley on top of a box.  The pulley was attached to a paper cup.  You were supposed to put the balloon in the cup, pull it up to the top of the box where it fell onto the shoot (which was a pool noodle sliced open) and then it fell into a sour cream container.  Gavin put thumb tacks into the bottom of the container facing up so that when the balloon came down the shoot it would pop when it hit the container.

Gavin's final big accomplishment this week was he finally figured out how to go across the monkey bars!  So we went out to the playground and he showed us how it's done and then the boys played for a little bit.

I almost forgot, this week the kids took apart an electronic item.  Gavin got to take apart Dad's clock radio (no surprise Dad was willing to sacrifice his alarm clock!).  Anyway, here's what's left of it!

When Dad saw his clock broken into lots of pieces he pretended to be upset that Gavin had taken it apart and Gavin thought it was very funny!

Overall, I think the camp was really good for Gavin.  Gavin (and I) both love history and I am not great at science so I was really hoping that a science camp would make science more interesting and spark his interest a little more and I think the camp succeeded in this.  Gavin told me he is still going to West Point for college but he wants to learn how to build the new weapons.