One of our Saturday routines is robotics class. It’s run by a former Silicon Valley engineer who now teaches kids to use Legos and computers to build little robots. Nyan’s a bit younger than the instructor – Coach G – usually teaches, but he agreed to give Nyan a shot.
Nyan’s been at it for about three months now, and while he isn’t always entirely focused for the entire 90 minute session, he does really well overall. Here’s a snippet of class from a few weeks back:
And a few photos from class, including a robotic Lego lion he built!
So we went to visit some schools in Cambridge, England. One of them had a computer lab in which the older kids had built a real, functioning robot. They call it Mechanoid, and it’s quite a thing. So the woman giving us the school tour turned on the droid and we had some fun. Or tried to; it wasn’t the most responsive robot ever, I suppose.
Still, there were high fives, or attempts at high fives:
And there were jokes, robot style:
And there was even a moment when our hero tried to dance with Mechanoid:
Okay, so maybe the technology isn’t quite ready for prime time. But still, this was built by some school kids! Very impressive.
As you may know, Nyan’s been taking an art enrichment class at school — an hour or so per week where they do a variety of painting and drawing and coloring, experimenting with color combinations, and so forth. We also take him to a nearby art studio twice a week — an hour on Tuesday evenings for painting/drawing, and an hour on Saturday mornings for clay. He absolutely loves it all.
On Friday, we got a small package of photos from the school’s art instructor, showing Nyan in action in the class, as well as the teacher’s assessment of Nyan in class. He is, we are told, a skilled painter. a sensitive and sensible boy, well loved by classmates, takes pride in helping his classmates, and also “always full of wacky ideas.” Here, check it out for yourself (click to enlarge):
Proud parents, us? You bet.
Bonus: here’s Nyan at the art studio the other day. Hard at work on his latest masterpiece. At the end of class he was showing it off to his teacher. Daddy whipped out his camera and said to Nyan: “Give us a smile!” You can see the result. Yes, that’s our boy and his wacky ideas.
(updated below) And the tiger, and the monkey. This is our boy at the end of a long, fun day at school, watching a short video with his pals. You can’t actually see the video but you can hear the song and you can see the kids play along and pretend to be various animals. And jump up and down. It’s pretty fun:
UPDATE: Long-time reader Grandma L. writes in to say that the music in this video comes from a group called The Wiggles. Thanks for the info!
It’s the rainy season here in Singapore. For instance, it was pouring when we woke up this morning and kept pouring until about noon. (Did Daddy and Nyan get soaked on the quick walk to school, despite an umbrella? They did.)
We always try to be prepared, so a few days ago, when Daddy was on his way to pick up Nyan at the end of the school day, he noticed the sky looked rather threatening with rain. So he grabbed Nyan’s umbrella, just in case.
When he got to school, Nyan and his friends – including Kyle, Adriana, Ling Ling, Nathaniel and Kyra – ran up to Daddy and excitedly pulled the umbrella out of his hands. And then they… well, just look:
Silly kids. For the record, we did not need the umbrella on our way home, either.
For a tropical place, it doesn’t actually seem to rain all that much here in Singapore. Or maybe it’s just that there’s a really long dry season. In any case, a few weeks back it was actually raining at pick-up-from-school time, so Daddy packed an umbrella. It had mostly stopped by the time we got outside, but that didn’t stop our hero from insisting that he use the umbrella.
Although,he didn’t exactly use it in conventional fashion…
Nyan at school, “drawing” with his friend Joseph at the end of a long day. It’s all fun and games and giggling until Adrianna – who’s unquestionably the alpha female of the class – tells them off for being “very noisy!” Does that admonition keep our hero from his art? Click and find out:
Back in late August, Nyan’s school took all the kids on a field trip to a place called River Safari. It’s next door to, and related to, but somehow separate from, the wonderful Singapore Zoo that we visited back in May, when we’d been on this little island for all of about three days, River Safari is kind of an aquarium: there’s a long path that takes you past various exhibits showing the marine life in the world’s biggest rivers (Nile, Amazon, Mississippi, a few in China, etc.). And there’s also a couple of giant pandas. (No, pandas don’t live in the world’s biggest rivers, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what the connection between rivers and pandas might be. But hey, it’s giant pandas! So who really cares if they don’t really belong here?) Overall it’s a pretty cool place, not as sprawling or comprehensive as the zoo next door but definitely worth a visit.
The younger kids had to be accompanied on the field trip by an adult, so Daddy had to got to come along. Daddy was waiting in the lobby of the school’s building when all the kids marched out; here’s a video he took before Nyan realized Daddy was there:
And here’s the bus we took, and Nyan on said bus:
It was about a half hour drive to River Safari, and then we had to wait around a bit as tickets were picked up and distributed. The kids entertained themselves by playing around with various statues and generally exploring things.
The little boy in the photo where Nyan is investgating the storm water grate is his pal Kyle, seen in these photos and in the video with Kyle’s cousin Eva:
As we mentioned, River Safari is all about marine life, including fish, crocodiles, manta rays, birds and more.
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And of course, there are two pandas. Though we only saw one (and you may seen these pictures and video in an earlier post):
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There was a lot of walking and running all over the site:
So much so that, on the bus ride back, Nyan zonked out, fast asleep. (Of course, Nyan being Nyan, he spent the first 25 minutes of the half-hour ride looking out the window, asking what everything was, trying to get out of his seat belt to run around, etc., and then conked out as the bus was almost back to the school. Great timing, kid!) But no worries – it was a great day filled with friends, fish and pandas (huh?).
Nyan had his first-ever field trip today, a school visit to a place called River Safari, right next to the Singapore Zoo. It’s mostly an aquarium of sorts, with displays showing marine life that lives in the world’s biggest rivers. Pretty interesting. Oddly enough, a couple years back they added a pair of giant panda — what do pandas have to do with the world’s greatest rivers? I can’t quite say. But whatever: who doesn’t love a panda? Nyan certainly loves pandas. (So does Daddy, truth be told.)
We’ll have more on the trip overall in a later post. But for now, some photos and a nice little video of our hero and his pal the panda.
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