Summer Camps 2012 Highlight Photos of the Season

Teaching is one of my passions. Another is photography. I combine both during my LEGO camps. During camp, you'll see me with this camera, a gigantic flash and now a Lightbender that follows you around camp. The kids all complain about the flash, but it's nice when parents get a chance to see what's going on. I love capturing the moments! This is just a sampling of my favorite photos from this summer. I take a couple hundred each session and even at that, I have to spare the families from most of the photos.

What's more fun than watching ant wars with LEGOs?

A day at the races.

LEGOs aren't just limited to boys, but overwhelmingly, the boys are the ones who sign up for the camps. Here are a few brave girls who have taken on the challenge of building.

WOW! Look what it just did!

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Yes, there are winners and losers in my camps. There are lots of races and other competitions. Here's the reaction of someone who won as he holds his car up for show.

Check out the yellow rubber band. This child was trying to give it the all wheel drive effect. Only in the state of Colorado do you need a 4 wheel drive LEGO car.

"I'm just this close to getting the robot to work!"

Thanks for a wonderful Summer 2012 Season. The kids were a joy to have and watching their smiles & excitement, their minds & imagination working, their passion for LEGOs building upon their curiosity for the world around them makes it all worthwhile!

Team #1023

OK so I waited 4 days to register for the Senior Solutions season for FIRST LEGO League. It didn't take long to be the 1023rd team to register this year. Every year FLL has been growing world wide and every year they allow more teams to register. I believe last year there were over 12k total teams.

Yesterday was our kickoff meeting and we started by doing a few administrative things and had a great team building time. The task was to build a movable robot using anything in the kit except wheels and treads. Also, you couldn't use any gears as wheels. They were given 1/2 hour to accomplish this task. Then afterwards, we raced the robots.

The robot w/o wheels. This team used one motor and some beams and rubber pieces to create a flipping motion.

Without real wheels, this team created some improvised ones and incorporated 3 motors. These folks won the race.

Next week I'm going to have them test out these new airless tires I bought and do a side by side comparison as to which types of wheels are better and why?

Ice Cream Mixed with LEGOS

Last night we took a trip out to the ice-cream store to use up some gift cards I got from the end of the semester. Our local Cold Stone Creamery was the destination of the evening. What a pleasant surprise for my kids when we walked in and saw this LEGO city on display. It was soooooo cool. The owner's son had set up this city since they weren't using the second stone. So I pulled out the camera and here's the results.

Taken with Pano. Was hard to avoid the reflective lighting.

Where's the fire?

Always love the details in these builds.

Who Let the Dog's Out?

I'm finishing up the semester with the homeschoolers next week. Spring break has struck, but kids are still happily building and finding new and innovative ways to "modify" the builds. This past week was probably the toughest build of the class. It consisted of building a dog using the motor to move three different body parts. That included the tail, the eyes and the jaw. Having one motor operate all these things means there's a combination of gears, worm screws and pulleys involved in making this happen. After that's all said and done, how could you possibly make the dog MOVE as well? The directions don't tell them, but a couple of kids figured it out anyways. Love the creativity and inventiveness of these young minds.

The first video is what the dog normally does, but it doesn't walk. 

The second video is a walking (well rolling) dog.

Come See Me at Chick-fil-A

If you are interested in seeing some of the models we build for camp up close and in person, there are 3 opportunities to drop by and see me at the Chick-fil-A Garden of the Gods. If you are wondering whether my summer camps would be too easy OR too hard for your child, come get a preview. You can even drop by and interview the instructor (that's me!) before dropping good money on a summer camp.

I'll be at a table set up for kids or adults to try their hand at building the best cow out of LEGO pieces.

So here are the dates when I'll be around:

1. Saturday April 21 from 4pm - 8pm as part of "Family Night Carnival"
2. Tuesday May 1 from 5pm - 7pm as part of "Family Fun Nite"
3. Saturday May 19 from 8am - 11am

Look forward to seeing you!

Look Who's Coming to Town

We got this postcard in the mail a couple weeks ago. As the kids oohhhhed and ahhheed over it, I had to tell them we couldn't go because we already had plans for that weekend. This Expo goes to select cities every year so maybe we can catch it another time.

Looks like fun. I'm not sure what the target age group is, but who doesn't love LEGOs? Also, what's interesting is they don't allow you to just show up anytime. You have to buy tickets for a pre-determined time slot of about 3-4 hours. It kind of reminds me of buying tickets to watch a play.

Here's the link to their site in case you are interested: www.legokidsfest.com.

Announcing 2012 Summer Camps

The schedule's all set for this summer's camps. I'll be holding 4 sessions of LEGO Engineering and 2 sessions of Mindstorms Robotics. Check out the home page of YBB to see the listing of schedules and locations.

Pulling together all the details can be daunting, but I like the challenge. Really the toughest part of the camps was finding a good location. This year I'm really happy with the new spots for our camps: Written World Bookstore and Springs Rhythm Studio and Event Center.

Both locations have an open floor plan, available parking, hard floors and best of all... easily accessible bathrooms! Kids have direct access to bathrooms so that I don't have to have them go in pairs anymore like I did at the Y. I feel much better about the layout of the rooms. Kids don't have to wander around to get to a restroom. Whew!

Also, I wanted to reach more people this year by finding locations in a southern and northern part of Colorado Springs. Granted, they aren't really that far apart, but anything helps. Actually Colorado Springs isn't that spread out of a place either. I had one request for the Broadmoor area too. Anyone interested in holding a camp there? If so, please let me know. I have a possible location, but can't justify doing it if there's no interest.

In case you are curious, if you took the LEGO Eng camps last summer or winter, this is the same camp. You are welcome to come back, but it will be a repeat of what you've already done.

Summer Camps are in the WORKS

I'm trying to secure locations for this summer's 2012 LEGO camps. I will continue to offer LEGO Engineering and Mindstorms Robotics. Depending on how much energy I have during the summer, I may look into the pneumatics add on for LEGO Engineering. Be on the lookout in the next few weeks for the new camps announcement. If you want, sign up for my email list to get the registration information when I've secured the dates/locations.