Turkeys, snowmen and even a band made appearances at the now annual MDS Robot Thanksgiving Day Parade, brought to you by the third grade. Over the past few weeks the third graders have been planning, designing, redesigning and building to get the Dash and Dot robots ready for the big parade. Students began by working with partners to come up with a theme or design idea for their robot. They sketched out their plan on Seesaw, made a list of the supplies and materials they would need and were then ready to get building! From snowbots to turkeys nothing was too avant garde for the design engineers.

Groups that designed Dot (the robot without wheels) had the added challenge of building a float so Dot could be pulled by Dash through the parade. Floats became chariots made of cardboard and thrones built from lego. The creativity of this year’s parade designers truly had no limits. Once robots were assembled, the challenge was then to code their bots through the parade route. Measuring tapes were pulled out and codes were written and rewritten to adjust for added weight. After seeing their visions come to life, and their codes successfully work, students were proud of all that they had accomplished and the parade they were able to put on.