Robot Design Academy

Welcome to the Robot Design Academy and the birthday party of my six-year-old son!  Here's a question for you?  Which takes longer, throwing the party or blogging about it?  Ok throwing it does, but blogging about it is a close second.  To keep this post from being any longer than it is already going to be, I'm going to show you lots of pictures with minimal descriptions.  Then I will go back in subsequent posts and break down the aspects of the party.  If you have any particular questions make sure and let me know so I can include the answers in my posts.  In this post, we also get to pretend that the party went off with out a hitch and I was completely ready when the doorbell rang for the first time instead of frantically decorating the cake.  I will disclose the good, the bad, and the not-so-perfect in future posts if you would like.  

Birthday Bob the Robot delivered the invitation to our guests.

This sign (albeit less wrinkled at the time) met them at the door to welcome them to our Robot Design Academy...

And they saw this high-tech take on the traditional birthday banner, when they came inside...

(Can I just tell you how frustrated I am, that there is a wall in the way of getting a straight on shot of the table.  *sigh*  Use your imaginations!)

I think this cake warrants his own post.  Can you tell how we made him stand up?

We had the party structured as a Design Academy.  We had a design activity, built prototypes...

...and tested robots (bristlebots) on a racetrack.

(This one just hangs out on the table and vacuums up your crumbs).

My 9-year-old was responsible for the construction and operation of our life-sized version of "Bob the birthday Bot." He spit out clues to find coins and the coins could be inserted in exchange for presents.

Guests went home with the prototypes they built, a hand-painted robot t-shirt (more on that later), their placemats that they decorated (more on those later), and candy from the table in paper bags with robot decals, specially selected and addressed by my son because it's cuter that way and mom was running out of time to run the bags through the computer as she initially designed.  The name badges I designed will be sent along with their thank-you notes, letting them know that they are officially Robot designers!

I think my son's wishes for a cool party came true!

(Sources and details to come in future posts.  If there is something you really want to know about, please ask!)