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Incline celebrates the 3rd annual Robot Parade

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – Parents, teachers, students, and members of the Incline Village community filed into the Incline Elementary School gymnasium last Thursday, December 19th, to cheer on the kids taking part in the third annual Robot Parade.

The parade route wrapped around the gym like a track as classes donning holiday sweaters and headbands (related to their robot theme) sat eagerly at the start, ready to show off their robot “floats” to their loved ones in the hour-long ceremony.

The idea of the Robot Parade came from IES teacher Trina Kleinhenz who teaches a STEM-style curriculum out of a room called the Makerspace. Her lessons involve project-based learning, teambuilding, and hands-on self-directed activities. This includes teaching computer science and coding to grades as early as kindergarten up to the 5th grade robotics club.



Using special LEGO kits, students spend months building robots and coding them through a computer, essentially teaching them to perform certain tasks, then they show off their inventions at the annual Robot Parade.

Belonging to a Facebook group geared towards elementary teachers who teach STEM while also thinking of the Balloons Over Broadway STEM Challenge, Kleinhenz came up with the idea to host a robot parade.



“I had never seen an assembly-type setup, so I wanted to bring that to IES,” Kleinhenz says.

Since this is the third year of the Robot Parade, Kleinheinz (known as “Ms. Trina” by the students) has seen the students’ skills grow with the robots’ performances in the parade. “They’ve been coding with me for three years now,” Ms. Trina affirms, explaining the improvement she’s noticed from those who started out in kindergarten who are in third grade now.

Melissa Flaming has two kids who were in the Robot Parade, second grader Kinsley and third grader Evelyn.

“This is such a cute little parade that they do, and the projects they make. They’ve worked for the past few months on this, forming teams, building robots, learning coding, and how to troubleshoot issues.

“Honestly, it’s one of the kids’ favorite classes. They’re always talking about it; they love tinkering,” Flaming smiles.

With that, the parade began with the Kinder Alive Hive going first. The adorable remote-controlled bees stayed close to the ground and rolled along, some of them needing a “turbo boost” (aka picking them up and walking them down the parade path a bit). The Second Graders’ “First Thanksgiving” themed robots went by, with paper turkeys rolling along atop three mechanized blue balls, directed by the second graders.

“They programmed them to go all the way down to the end and make the turn down there,” Flaming said, watching Kinsley steer her turkey around the corner.

The third grade “Animal Adaptations” came next where little pop-up clay animal displays rolled along on a LEGO base and wheels.

A turtle, lobster, jackrabbit, and alpaca rolled by, followed by a sloth, giraffe, and bobcat. Watching how the size of the wheels seemed to affect how fast the robots went, a puffer fish, hermit crab, platypus, and otter passed.

Then the First Grade Frog Life Cycle presentation came along, featuring entire interactive performances of frogs jumping on different colored “lily pads.” The frogs were spinning around and doing tricks, the kids in their frog hats fully immersed in the process. The fourth-grade “Wild Robots” were a bit more advanced, with more work going into the design, artistry, construction, and engineering of the big Styrofoam-headed androids. One robot ran into the back of one of their fellow classmate’s legs and the mechanical ball popped out of it.

The fifth grade “Earths” consisted of planets on LEGO bases that spun around and rolled. These were the most advanced robots, the finale being a rolling robot with spinning planets surrounding a LEGO guy on top waving its arms.

The Incline Education Fund raised money to build the Makerspace project a few years ago which led IES to become a Nevada Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology STEM accredited school. “The thing I noticed is there were no tears today,” Incline Education Fund’s Mary Dahaney says. “They’ve remarkably improved their patience level.”

“It’s really amazing to see, but I think that’s because I saw all the work that went into this over the last couple of months finally come into fruition,” says IES Principal Jena Curtis. “To have these kids actually programming this stuff, it’s so advanced, and they’re all cheering for each other,” she beams.


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