Saturday, October 31, 2020

Sphero Golf Course

*The photos in this post were taken before COVID, before masks and before social distancing but could still be done in this crazy time we are in.


I first learned of Spheros at Space Camp. We programmed these clear spheres to go over mountains and through rivers to gain sols on Mars! It was so much fun and I knew I had to have these in my classroom! I wrote a grant and once the adorable, glowy spheres arrived I could hardly wait to play. But I had no idea what to really do with them to get the most educational value out of them. That only lasted until I went to the Sphero community and found more than I could ever imagine.

I taped off some mazes on the floor and students used their Chromebooks to connect the Spheros via bluetooth and they were able to dive into programming right away navigating the mazes. I have plans to blog about how I have used them in water as boat engines, with K'nex as race car engines, to send secret messages after reading Ender's Game, and as Roman Chariots in social studies. And yes, there is definitely more! But for now, I want to show you SPHERO MINI GOLF!


Beginning my trip down the rabbit hole to get inspiration, I saw some mini golf activities with elaborate courses made from felt with real sand hazards and real golf pins with fancy flags. Even though I am the founder of the being too extra club, I wanted to create something we could pull out and quickly use during downtime or duck days. So I created a few mini golf holes in Powerpoint, printed them on the poster maker then laminated. 


Once the mini golf course was made, I had to think about scoring and the logistics of coding the Spheros to make it to the hole. Would students get unlimited chances to code or would each try count as a "stroke?" How would they team up and rotate through the course? Would they get bored if they were waiting on the other team to complete the hole or should they take turns? 


You can see from their smiles that I was asking myself way too many questions! They LOVED the mini golf and had so much fun playing the course! 


I also created a score card for them to use. Each block of code counted as a stroke. Teams tried to go over the sand and water so we had to put in some hazard play rules! 



I based the par on how many blocks of code it took to get to the hole. So one block of code was one stroke. Some of my golfers argued that my par numbers were not "on par!" I had a lot of no way we can get this in 2 strokes or 4 strokes! But they did and it was so fun to watch! Sphero Mini Golf was a huge hit! I am linking my course below and I hope you will use it with your students or as inspiration for your own course!


SPHERO MINI GOLF COURSE AND SCORE CARD

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