Welcome to the Fundamentals of Coding with SPIKE Essential! Designed for elementary school students, this course uses the LEGO SPIKE Essential kit to teach foundational coding and STEM concepts. Students will assemble robot designs based on real-world robots to foster creativity, problem-solving skills, and an understanding of how robotics are used in the real world.
Duration
6 Weeks (1.5 hrs/class)
Ages
Elementary Students
Materials
LEGO SPIKE Essential Kit
Focus: Light Up Snackbot
Students are introduced to the LEGO kit and the concept of robots in the workplace. We will build "Snackbot," an office delivery robot, and learn how to program its Light Matrix to display colored patterns and messages.
Activities: Meet Snackbot, Build Snackbot, Matching Code Activity, and Light Pattern Challenge.
Focus: Spinny Snackbot & Buggy Bugs
It’s time to get moving! Students will attach and program motors to make their Snackbot drive. In the second half, we introduce the concept of "bugs" in code by building the "PixelPest" robot to identify and fix programming errors.
Activities: Build Spinny Snackbot & PixelPest, "What is Spinny Snackbot Doing?", and Bug Builder Challenge.
Focus: Journey on the Moon & Dodging Craters
Students take their skills to space by building "Iris," a lunar rover. We will program Iris to move forward across the lunar surface and learn how to program precise turns to dodge moon craters.
Activities: Alien Leapfrog Activity, The Buggy Rover Activity, and "The Crater is Lava" Challenge.
Focus: Strawberry Spotting
Robots need to understand their environment! Students will build the "Strawberry Sorter" and learn how to use the Color Sensor to detect red, ripe strawberries. We will also introduce the "Wait Until" block and pseudocode.
Activities: Build the Strawberry Sorter, "Make It Grow" Activity, and Strawberry Spotting Challenge.
Focus: Loopy Strawberries & Sorting Strawberries
This week focuses on making our code more efficient. Students will identify patterns and use Repeat Loops. Then, they will learn how to program simple and looped decisions using "if-then-else" blocks to sort strawberries by color.
Activities: Loop Game, Dancing Game, and the ultimate Sorting Strawberries Challenge.
Focus: Tilt it, Shake it, Bot-it!
In our final week, students will explore event-based programming using the Gyro Sensor. By building "Bot-it," students will learn how tilting and shaking the robot triggers different events. We wrap up with a fun, interactive game!
Activities: Introduction to Gyroscopes, Build Bot-it, Games with Events, and the final "Bot-it!" Challenge.
