Design Your Own Robot:
Parents' Guide

The Robots Gallery contains an on-line interactive, explanatory materials, and a number of accompanying activities. Although most of these activities are intended to be done in a classroom setting, many could be adapted by parents for use with their kids. (We'll give you suggestions for how to do this, below.)

We suggest you take your own tour of the Robot Gallery before exploring this with your kids. Doing so will familiarize you with the interactives and the background information and activities designed to accompany them.

Think about whether you want your children to move through the galleries randomly or whether you want to suggest a particular route. Both approaches have value; which you should choose depends on both your kids and your goals.

Be aware that there is a lot here. If you do want to look at everything, you will most likely spend a fair amount of time.

Some of the concepts presented here may seem rather technical or unfamiliar. But don't hesitate to jump in and try the interactives even if you don't understand everything about how they work. You and your kids will learn much from just trying these interactives and seeing and talking about what happens.

1. Go to Design Your Own Robot: Pre-Activities. This page describes the Design Your Own Robot Interactive and provides background material about the six major characteristics involved in robot design.
2. Go to the Design Your Own Robot interactive. Here, you will have a chance to design and build your own robots, intended to accomplish six specific tasks.
3. After you've finished the Design Your Own Robot interactive, go to the Design Your Own Robot Links page. This page has links to detailed information on robots, robot construction kits and robot competitions. If your kids are really excited by robots, you might find ways to encourage their interest by going to some of these links.
4. After exploring some of these links, come back to Design Your Own Robot: Post-Activities. This page contains questions about the interactive your class has just finished exploring.