Russell Middle School Scrimmage Champs!

Definition SCRIMMAGE - A practice session or informal game.

Yesterday we competed at a local middle school against 15 other FLL teams and we actually won! I was losing hope of winning anything since we didn't get anything for the project  or robot design. I thought we were pretty strong in those areas. It turned out in the end we wound up with the plaque for the overall Scrimmage Champions. It doesn't advance us to anything at the state level or do anything really special since this was just a practice session, but we were proud to get the award.

It's only about half way through the season and no team is really ready to compete, but  we learned so much of what we needed to do from all the wonderful volunteer judges who shared with us honestly what we did well and what we could improve upon. We can only get better from here.

I LOVE what FLL teaches the kids. It's not really about the robots. The scrimmage helped the kids learn about working under pressure. They had to interact with adults who had very pointed questions about their research, teamwork and robot building design and held them accountable. Best of all, they got a chance to experience failure & disappointment and how to pick themselves up from that and continue the competition. I was so proud to be part of a team of kids who encouraged one another. One kid was really discouraged about one of the robot runs and another sat down with him and encouraged him about the whole situation. Our team definitely came together as a unit yesterday and so now I hope they will take these lessons learned and grow from it. It's not about Championships or robots or LEGOs. I'll speak to that in my next post.

We share our experiences with others

We went to Cool Science on Saturday and it was a day of non-stop talking for our kids. They interacted with hundreds of people young and old. It was such a neat event to get share with the public both the research and the robot game with the folks who came by. Kudos to the organizers who made our lives so much easier by providing wonderful volunteers and food & water.

I was so proud of all the boys who participated. For some, it was a stretch to talk to so many different people in one two hour time slot, but I absolutely think it's a terrific skill to acquire. Everybody was so nice to the boys and were genuinely interested in the MIndstorms and all they had to say about food safety.

My favorite moment of the day was when this 6 year old boy saw the robot retrieving the fish back into base. His jaw dropped wide open when he saw that. I missed catching the picture, but I did get a photo of the boy with his mom as he stayed to continue watching the robot retrieve fish.

We're going to be at Cool Science at UCCS

I've always tried to seek out those science fairs where people in business, education and the community could share their technology with young, curious minds. My kids love the hands on atmosphere and encouragement they would get from the many adult and student volunteers.

Well this year our FLL team, the Mindstorms Maniacs, are going to be at the Cool Science Festival at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Our 6 member team has been hard at work trying to come up with a good robot as well as they will be sharing some of their findings about keeping food safe.

This is our attempt to meet the FLL criteria of sharing our research and our robot. It's the first time out for the group so we're not exactly sure how it will go, but at least we'll have tried. We will have demonstrations of our current robot and have a hands on LEGO power car trying to make its way up a ramp with a load of canned chicken.