Robots & Rockets

Just before the summer, I was asked by a school to provide some ideas for their "Inventions" topic. Two topics which leapt to mind were Rockets and Robots. Rockets because it links in with Space, which is a perennial favourite and has lots of practical work, and Robots because of the increased interest in programming i.e. controlling robots.

In the Rockets work, we covered their history from ancient China through fireworks to V2s and the Space Race. We used balloon rockets on string and had a good go with stomp rockets before using Rokit kits to investigate pressurized water rockets. All went down really well as they involved hands-on for the children. The only damp squib (firework reference) was the first go with Rokit kits when my old kit didn't cut it. Second time around though, job done.
There is so much can be gained from this topic in terms of Science, Maths, History and even Literacy.

Balloon rocket. A stomp rocket attached to a string was far more ffective.

Robots was more of a challenge for me but I was really pleased with the way things went. My presentation made the children compare humans and robots (Somerset Thinking Skills Course) and devise their own Laws of Robotics, after Isaac Asimov. The resources we used included remote-control toys (Daleks, dinosaurs), iPad apps and Lego.

IEEE Spectrum Robots app - free download, excellent.

Having just bought 5 sets of Lego WeDo, I had to get the children using them. They were a hit with both children and staff despite limitations of access to software as I only have a single user licence. We also had quite a successful go with Lego Mindstorms. 
I didn't get round to introducing the children and staff to Scratch but, hopefully, I'll have laid the groundwork for that in the future.

We also mentioned in passing Dr Who, Wall-E, Metropolis, I-Robot, K'nex and several other resources worthy of more detailed study.