Soldering the Octolively Kit

Note, I decided to solder the switch on the front of the board as the instructions say is an option; this way we can turn on the board as we play with it more easily!

Here are my learnings:

 

These were so tiny, but they are in the kit! So look for them before you solder the LEDs since the LEDs are much taller and you'll have to otherwise hold the 6 pin onto the board and potentially burn your finger like I did… haha ;-)


Evil Mad Scientist's kits:
http://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/Octolively

The $90 Spark Fun Kit is also highly recommended.
Over the Christmas break we played with it with our 7 year old niece and 11 year old nephew.
The 7 year old had just enough motor control to place all the leads into the breadboard, whereas the 11 year old was programming combined exercises together -- sound + buttons, morse code, reaction game, ...
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11576

Drawing Lessons

My 7 year old niece is very into crafts and interested in drawing.
So instead of the usual math or programming activities we do with the nephews, I decided to make an illustrated video with her this Christmas!

I was trying to encourage her to free-hand draw more.
Unfortunately she still mostly preferred tracing most of the time.

Here's our first draft in Keynote.
I asked her to name and type the titles of each illustration.

There are a few more scenes I would like to add including singing Frozen songs all week and practicing the Cup song.

I wanted her to learn that things don't need to be perfect first off; we can iterate!
I also purposely did not correct the angles of the pictures to see if she'll learn to take better pictures of the drawings next time.

I didn't have exciting Christmas songs, so we upgraded to Animoto and of course used one of their spiffy styles!


And here's an Animoto version w pics.
We took some videos over Christmas, so hopefully I can add those in once the brother-in-law finishes them.

Your Majesty

Our cat Gray has been sick. We were not sure he was going to make it.
However, after a blood transfusion from a technician's cat, and several days of IV, Gray began to finally eat out of his food bowl again.

I commended him in that dog owner voice, "Good booooyyy."
And I immediately felt bad about offending him for talking to him like a dog.

...
Your majesty. I'm so honored you are eating again ...