Homeschool Day
Careers in Coding
December 1 & December 16, 2021
“The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.”
-Edward Teller
Hands-On Activities:
Battle Bots
Programming gets physical when battle bots face off! Find the right combination of moves to push your robo-opponent out of the arena or flip them upside down with your bot’s servo lever.
Star Wars Coding
Did you know hundreds of computer engineers worked on the Star Wars movies? Now it’s your turn to program the droids: build with digital blocks of code to help BB-8 and R2-D2 complete their missions—but watch out for bandits and Stormtroopers!
Ozobots
Learn the language of Ozobots in this colorful twist on coding. Teach your mini bot to navigate an obstacle course using color-coded dots and lines that illustrate basic coding concepts, like cause and effect.
Living Mural
Thanks to your creative additions, the Living Mural has grown so much in 2021! Come see the newest changes and create a coding-themed artwork, then join us in 2022 when Homeschool Days return to see the Mural’s newest form.
Career Corner
Take home our Career Corner handout, featuring careers in coding and computer science, skills that computer engineers, roboticists, and other programming professionals need, and links to cool coding activities online.
Learning Labs:
Kinder-2nd Grade
Code a Snack – 10:30-11:15am
See what real animals at the Science Mill like to snack on, then use what you observe to program a game using Scratch Jr. Can you combine blocks of code to match each animal with their favorite food? Then explore to see what else you can create with code!
3rd-5th Grade
Language of Robots – 11:30am-12:30pm
Work as a team to turn a favorite character from a book or video game into a 3D robot! To communicate with your new buddy, you’ll need to use computational thinking to break bigger jobs into simpler “robot-ready” tasks and coding languages that can translate digital instructions into blinking lights or whirring motors.
6th-12th Grade
Human-Computer Interaction – 1:00-2:00pm
Today, we can turn on music or dim the lights with a simple voice command—and lots and lots of behind-the-scenes code. Uncover the world of object-oriented programming as you experiment with LED lights, servomotors and three different programming languages: MakeCode, JavaScript and Python. Problem-solve like a programmer to debug your code and simplify tasks with code abstraction.