Introduction: The King and the Kin-dom

Welcome, Theobotics Engineers! Our robot, Theo, is ready for the first set of quests. We're going to dig deep into the part of The Lord's prayer Jesus taught us: "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

When Jesus prayed this, it was a dangerous prayer. He lived in a world ruled by powerful kings and emperors who built kingdoms based on fear and control. The most famous example from the Old Testament was Pharaoh, a king who enslaved God's people to build his own empire.

Jesus' idea of a kingdom was completely different. It was so different that we're going to use a special word for it: Kin-dom.

The word Kin-dom reminds us that God's kingdom is like a big, loving family. It’s not about power and pyramids with a king at the top; it's about relationships, community, and taking care of our "kin"—our brothers and sisters. It’s a kingdom built on love, not fear.

In these five quests, you will program Theo to explore the difference between a worldly kingdom, like Pharaoh's, and God's heavenly Kin-dom. Theobot will learn what it means to choose freedom over fear, courage over comfort, and service over power, all so we can help build God's Kin-dom right here, right now.

First, though, let's meet our robot!

Meet Theo. Theo is a robot called the Finch Robot 2.0. Take some time to get to know Theo and what Theo can do.

  • Visit Theo’s website (https://www.birdbraintechnologies.com/products/finch-robot-2-0/)
  • Check out a couple of ways to program Theo
    • https://learn.birdbraintechnologies.com/finch/program/

For this week, we’ll mostly use BirdBlox and Snap, but if you’d like to check out Python for programming Theo, feel free! Theo can drive, turn, play sounds, light up lights on its beak or tail, light up lights on its circuit board, sense its distance from nearby objects, and sense acceleration. There’s a lot Theo can do.

We're also going to make videos of Theo doing the things we program him to do, and so some of you will be in charge of set design, construction, decoration, and coloring. Some of you will be involved in writing a script for Theo to act out as he carries out our quests.