Robot Turtles - Game of the Month

This post is part of the ABC's of Raising Well-Rounded Geeklings series. Be sure to check it out, because there are lots of fun activities, crafts and educational posts being shared by a handful of different bloggers! 

Robot Turtles is also our Game of the Month! We love this game and it's one of our Top 5 games that we play on a weekly basis. Robot Turtles is engaging, creative, educational and most of all, fun! We also love that this game is semi-cooperative and allows players to work together if they want. Robot Turtles can also be used in STEM learning activities, since it teaches the fundamentals of programming. 

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Robot Turtles was designed by software entrepreneur Dan Shapiro. He created the game for his (at the time) four-year-old twins on a lazy afternoon. Robot Turtles went on to become the most backed game on Kickstarter! Then ThinkFun picked it up, and now you can find it at Target and Amazon! 

So what makes Robot Turtles special? It teaches the fundamentals of programming to children as young as 3! Why is programming important for kids? When he designed this game, Dan Shapiro wanted to give his children a wonderful gift, the skill of programming. He wanted to teach them how to program a computer without needing a computer. This is a great skill, especially in our technological age where understanding how coding works at a young age will help them in the future. 

Who is this game for? Children 4+ (or 3, if they are familiar with playing games) and for 2-5 players. Reading is not required either. There are only 4 turtles to play, but an adult can sit in as the 5th player to help the younger kids as a "Turtle Mover." The Turtle Mover represents the "computer" and should take responsibility for moving the player pieces around. 

However, for the most part, my children have always been responsible for moving their own player pieces. We explain the turn (choose a card to move the turtle), help them move the turtle or let them move it by themselves, look at the obstacles and work out a plan to overcome them to reach the jewel. This is because Bean is incredibly independent and will not allow someone else take a move for her that she herself can do. 

The Turtles come in four colors: blue (Beep), purple (Dot), green (Pangle), and red (Pi). There are four code card decks, color-coded to match their turtle, and the cards have a solid bar of color and a symbol, which tells you what the card does. Blue is Forward, Yellow is Left, Purple is Right, Red is Lasers (or Blasters, as Munchkin calls them), and Green is Function Frog. Each player also has a Bug tile, which they can tap to re-do their last move. 

Ignoring that Munchkin started his turn where Pi, the red turtle, is supposed to start, you can see how Munchkin took his first 3 turns. He moved forward twice and then turned left, but stayed in the same square. You only turn the turtle 90 degrees when you play a yellow or purple card. Then you can play a blue card to move them forward.

So how do you use the other tiles? There are stone walls, crates, and ice walls. Each one introduces a different type of obstacle and ways to move through it or around it. You should introduce them in order (ice walls, lasers, stone walls, and then crates) and only one at a time. Play the game a couple times between unlocking the levels, so your child(ren) can get used to the new rules before adding more.

When you first introduce the Ice walls, you are unable to move through them, so do not arrange them in a way that prevents any of the players from reaching the gems. If you run into one, make a turtle sound and wiggle about (the rule book suggests acting silly and making it fun!).

Once you add in lasers, you can blast down the wall, which results in a puddle (flip the tile over). You can now move through that space.

In the pictures below, you can see which cards were used to move and blast the ice wall.

Play until all the turtles reach their gems. We've always played until the turtle reaches the gem, occasionally they will play an extra turn and be on top of the gem. When you reach your gem, remove it from the game and place it in front of your cards. You can either stop playing, or you can help out the other turtles by blasting ice walls or moving crates around.

The one obstacle you cannot move or blast is the stone wall. Once it's placed and the game begins, you're not allowed to move it. Be creative with the placement! It's fun to make it difficult.

Below you can see how Munchkin moved the crate out of his Turtle's way.

The only card not pictured is the "Function Frog" card, because we haven't unlocked it yet. We try to play the game at least 5 times with each new "unlocked" level before we try to introduce a new one. The Function Frog should be used by experienced players, who are ready for a more difficult game. The Function Frog is used to represent a reoccurring pattern in the code.

There are also extension activities available, like creating an Adventure Quest. There's also a Quest Library of ready-made Adventures created by kids that you can play.

You can also pick up the interactive eBook for 3-8 year old's. You'll play the role of Beep the Robot Turtle and go on a quest to retrieve a precious jewel. It has all the same mechanics of the game and you can even print it out! And there are bonus coloring pages!

There are so many different ways to play this game and that makes it all the more fun! Start out at the most basic level with your children, regardless of age, and work your way up. Let them experience leveling up. Take pride in overcoming the obstacles!

Have you played Robot Turtles? If you're new to this game, what do you like about it? Let us know in the comments!

Hydroponics at Home

Welcome to the A-Z Kids STEM Activities Series! Today I will be sharing a lesson on Hydroponics!

We first started learning about hydroponics last spring when my aunt gave us a cutting of a Dracaena house plant. She told us to leave it in a pot of water until it grew roots. This literally took months. As of now, the roots are only a few inches long. Over the summer we experimented with adding soil and discovered that it grew better with just water. That's when we decided to look into growing methods that omit soil.

We started by checking out Instructables and found that they did in fact have some suggestions for growing using the hydroponics method at home. Hydroponics is basically growing plants without the use of dirt or soil and replacing it with a nutrient rich water. If you like DIY projects and growing your own herbs and vegetables, but have a limited space (live in an apartment, have a small yard, etc.) this is a great method to try out!

Back to the Roots AquaFarm

If you'd like to learn more about hydroponics on a smaller level, I'd definitely suggest the AquaFarm from Back to the Roots. It's a fish tank that allows you to also grow six plants right above the tank. You could have a mini herb garden in your kitchen! The AquaFarm is a great example of a small scale aquaponics system, which is a food production process that combines aquaculture (raising fish in tanks) with hydroponics. The fish feed the plants and the plants clean the water. This closed-loop ecosystem is also a great way to learn about symbiotic relationships in an environment!

Wikipedia image of a hydroponics system.

Wikipedia image of an aquaponics system.

To start your own hydroponics growing system, you'll need to choose your plant (it will be harder to start from seed), a bucket and/or Net Cup, a medium (could be sand, Clay, Rockwool Cubes, or nothing at all), and a nutrient rich water source (like FloraGro Fertilizer). You can easily find these materials at Home Depot, local gardening stores or even online (Amazon has some decent deals). It will cost about $30 to buy all the basic materials to start a small hydroponics system. Hydroponically grown foods are said to taste better and are more nutritious. You can also control what goes into growing them and you'll pollute less, which is good for the environment!

The method we use is the static solution culture. We plan to expand on our project in the spring and create a garden outside using plastic tubs to grow herbs and vegetables. Currently we have green onions, celery and our Dracaena plant growing on our windowsill. We do not use a nutrient fertilizer, but we will once we set up the garden outside. The green onions and celery simply regrow every time they are cut (right above the bulb or 1-2 inches above the roots). We always buy organic vegetables that we plan to regrow in our windowsill. We replace the water at least once a week and clean the roots to make sure there is no algae growth or root rot. Too much water can actually damage the roots, so I always leave a small amount of the roots above the water to aerate them. Many people who use the hydroponics method at home use a bubbler system that aerates the water for them. We use a hand pump with a tube to add air to the water once or twice a day. The kids love helping! We only do this for the Dracaena plant.

Why do we learn about hydroponics at home? We are homeschoolers and enjoy learning about science in real life situations. Life science is especially fascinating to Bean and she likes reading books about plants and how they grow (her favorites are Science With Plants and How Flowers Grow). Hydroponics is relatively low maintenance (depending on the type of system you put together and how many plants you decide to grow) and is an easy way for children to learn about growing their own plants and food. We also feel that it is important to teach them how to care for plants at a young age so they will grow up knowing how to grow their own food.

We do not have many sunny windowsills in our house, so we reserve those for the vegetables and herbs. Our Dracaena does well in low sunlight. Bean wanted to be able to see the roots grow, so we chose a clear container. Unfortunately, our Dracaena is quite a heavy plant, so we had to use this sturdy glass litre mug.

We keep track of growth by measuring the roots, stems and leaves about once a week. If we are especially busy (like in December), we will skip the weekly checks and see what the end of the month shows. We track the growth using a calendar, noting the days that we change the water (we measure it when it is out of the water on a clean surface), along with the weather for the day. This helps us compare the growth, such as slower growth on cold weeks, and more growth on warmer, sunny weeks. This spring we will finally transition the Dracaena to a large planter. In the meantime we will continue to learn about hydroponics and try other techniques to see what system works best for us!

Be sure to visit Little Bins for Little Hands to find more posts in the A-Z Kids STEM Activities Series!