When approaching this, I found that I think about a visual aspect or some sort of interactive thing and then think about what things we've learned would let me build it.
1) What about a squirrel? The kids would come up to the table, put an acorn shaped thing on a plate (with a resistance sensor attached), which would trigger the squirrel (built on a Cricket) to come over, pick up the acorn, and take it someplace else. But if you pulled the squirrel's tail, it would hiss at you and run away to protect its acorns. And if it was 'cold' (you blew on the squirrel), the squirrel would go to its acorns and wrap its tail around itself to prepare for winter.
2) I also thought about making a bee, or multiple bees. The bee would be buzzing over a big tablecloth of flowers, stopping only on specific colors of flowers and doing some bee thing. You could have multiple bees and going to flowers and returning to their hive. And if you swatted a bee or touched it (blocking a light sensor), it would buzz and 'sting' you (squirt of water). And if you clapped or made a loud noise, all the bees would swarm and return to their hive.
3) And finally, I could build a scene from 'Up.' If you haven't seen the movie, immediately go to Netflix and watch it. This is my idea for it summarized in a drawing:
Basically, the figurines are on a cricket that rolls around, and maybe connects to the separate figurines so they move; it is controlled by another cricket that has buttons that tells the other cricket to move. The house will be a mostly empty box with aluminum foil covering it; it the alligator clips will connect down to the cricket, which will be on the lookout for contact with the aluminum coated obstacles. If the aluminum on the house touches the aluminum on the obstacles, a noise (and maybe motion) will activate. The point is to drive past all the obstacles. At the end, by the waterfall, another robot will sense the arrival of the cricket and will give out an Ellie badge.
Later,
Lucia
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