Kids Project: Vibrobots

It's pretty cool what you can do with stuff you already have laying around. Once again, Lewis showed me a book of robotics that had some pictures of vibrobots. These are small robots that move using vibration. All it takes is a "AA" battery, a vibrating motor, some wire and hot glue. We used other junk electronics I had laying to add features to our bots. You could use motors from a pager, cell phone or RC car, but mine came from a pair of defunct Xbox controllers.

Lewis was the traditionalist and went with a vibrating bug. Nate and Corinne went with animals near and dear to their hearts, a dog and cat respectively. Lydia pushed her creativity and came out with a dancing frog. All told this took us the better part of a Saturday morning.

These don't stand up well to abuse, and I've re-glued the precious cat multiple times. I dread the battle that awaits when the battery dies...

Kids Project: Rubber-Band Cars

Here is a project we did several weeks ago that put huge smiles on the kids' faces. One day Lewis brought home a book from the school Library called, "Amazing Rubber Band Cars" by Mike Rigsby. He was very excited about making some of the cars from the book. So one Saturday we sat down and copied a basic template from his book and came up with our own design. Below are the results.

We used hot glue for nearly all of the construction, but found that you needed glue on both sides of the tires to make them durable enough for kid use. We also had to play around with the rubber-band size and spacing since our rubber bands obviously differed from those used in the book. The cars withstood quite a bit of abuse and got used periodically throughout the following weeks. I love projects that keep the kids entertained for more than an hour.