Bevil Wood­ing

We may be in the mid­dle of the va­ca­tion sea­son, but stu­dents on break don't have to head to the beach, or play video games to have fun. The ex­tend­ed hol­i­day pe­ri­od pro­vides a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to work on projects that build on ideas they might have learned at school or to pur­sue ideas they might not ever have chance to ex­plore in the class­room. With the right in­vest­ment of time, ef­fort and re­source, their ideas can eas­i­ly ex­pand from do-it-your­self projects in­to ca­reers or even busi­ness­es.

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1. Build a ro­bot

Build­ing a ro­bot might at first seem to be a daunt­ing task. How­ev­er, a num­ber of new tools like LEGO Mind­storms, MOSS Zom­boni­tron, Cubelets, Makey Makey, Make­do and Ar­duino make it eas­i­er than ever be­fore for kids to learn how to build hard­ware. Even with­out any elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing or cod­ing skills, build­ing a ro­bot can now be as easy as as­sem­bling do-it-your­self kits or as straight­for­ward as fol­low­ing step-by-side in­struc­tions from on­line re­source Web sites such as:

http://www.Lets­MakeR­o­bots.com

http://www.In­structa­bles.com

http://www.Ro­bot­Shop.com