Kids Club enjoys robotic adventures during early dismissal afternoon …

During its last early dismissal from school, West Elementary Kids Club had 66 students participating in an afternoon of five fun-filled stations. The most exciting station was organized by Kathy Hay from Keystone Area Education Association (AEA). Hay brought with her four different types of robots, each with outstanding capabilities. “Meccanoid” (pictured) is a three-foot tall robot that follows voice commands including dance, exercise, high five, kung fu, and walks with people. “Ollie” is a cylinder-shaped robot that spins, turns and speeds along any surface. Star Wars movie-goers would have enjoyed the “BB8,” which is just like the BB8 in the new Star Wars movie, but is 10 times smaller. The head stays on the top while the bottom sphere body rolls right, left, forwards and backwards, spinning as it goes. Last but not least was the “EV3 Storm,” which is built with Legos and moves forward, backward, turns and spins, using several motors to raise an arm, pick up objects, and run with infrared wavelength. The other four stations that afternoon had a tough act to follow with these exciting robots, but everyone had a good time with the following stations: Station 2 included donuts on a string with students' hands behind their back; Station 3 involved the students' all-time favorite activity, building (with Legos) a unique creation; Station 4 was a highly active center where students tied a tissue box to their backs with bells and bouncy balls inside and bounced to see how quickly they could get all the objects out of the box; Station 5 was the fastest “Cup Stackers.” This ended with a mountain stack of cups. Parents from the West Elementary Kids Club program provided all the food, which was greatly appreciated by Site Coordinator Virginia Kurth. Submitted photo.