Learning Small Animal Care Using Lego WeDo Programmable Pets
My students need the Junior lego WeDo robotics sets and a 1050 graphics card to design, build and care for their own small (robotic) pet.
$983 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
I teach at a Title I school in Los Angeles where one hundred percent of our students receive free breakfast and lunch.
My students start the day, every day, hopeful of what we will learn in class that day.
I ask them, "Why did you come to school today?" and they reply, "To change the world!" My students know that I believe in them and that with passion, determination, and a positive outlook of their potential they can be anything they want to be.
All of my students qualify for complimentary school district provided meals, before, during and after school. Despite so many challenges, my students are eager to learn and do their best. They want to be in school because they want to learn all they can so they can be successful one day.
My Project
Taking care of small animals is a big responsibility. My students love our class pet fish and are always concerned about its well being. My project will combine STEM skills of building and engineering robots, with developing an understating of animals needs and the responsibility it takes to care for them. This year-long project will create an enduring lesson about compassion for animals and a genuine curiosity and passion for protecting them. In this project, students will work in teams to research an animal that they would like to take care of. They will use the Lego WeDo kits to build, program, and care for their animal of choice. They will develop programming skills by programming some key behaviors of that animal into the robot. A new 1050 graphics card will make programming them a breeze!
They will learn about the ways that the animal responds to affection, care and sensory inputs and use the color, touch and sound sensors to program those behaviors into their animal.
Daily care can be programmed; every 4 hours the animal- whether it be a mouse, a snake, a cat or an elephant, can be programmed to "call" for its meal. Using the touch sensor, a gentle pet on the cats back can respond with purr or a meow. By integrating empathy and responsibility behaviors towards animals into a STEM building project, students will be able to meet both rigorous 21st century academic standards with a love and respect for the animal world around them.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Dr. Gumpert and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
