We're off to State!

Connor C, Megan D, Sean K, Sean J, Thomas D,
Ben D, Noah K, Ryler D (Jeffrey T is missing!) 

                                         Lego Lightning Black

Great Job Team! 

FIRST Lego League team project request

Dear friends,

Our First Lego League team, Lego Lightning Black, is doing a research project and we need your input. Please visit our blog, read about our project, and participate in our one-question poll. To give you a brief idea of what we are doing, we have designed an in-home flour purifier so that you do not have unknown things in your flour.

Again, please visit our blog, participate in our poll and forward this email to as many people as possible. Thank You!
Lego Lightning Black,

Megan D., Sean J., Jeffrey T.
Connor C., Sean K., Thomas D.
Ryler D., Noah K., Ben D.

FIRST Lego League

This is our 4th year in FLL.  Each year we head into season excited, challenged, and full of hope.  As the season progresses, none of that changes ...i would probably add stressed to my own list but over all its a wonderful experience. 
This year we have a completely new challenge, 2 teams, with lots of wonderful new friends!  And i have to give the kids a lot of credit, with myself being out for about 5 weeks with baby and then illness, our own kids being out for a couple of weeks due to illness, and then multiple families taking vacations (gotta love homeschooling!) in October, things have been crazy but the kids continue on! I'm very proud of all of them! 

We have 15 FLL kids and 4 JrFLLers for a total of 3 teams.  The 'veteran' team and the Junior team head to regionals Saturday, Nov 12th while our 'rookie' team competes on the 19th.  From each regional event in our area, 8 teams will be heading to State.  We'll keep you posted!

On monday several of our kids participated in a local scrimmage with 6 other FLL teams.  There were 4 Veteran teams and 4 Rookie teams in attendance.  Both of our teams did a wonderful job.  Our Veteran team came in 2nd and our Rookie team tied for 4th out of 8 teams. 
We learned a lot.  And some of those things could only be learned while competing.  For example, the stress of the run.  Until you are under the clock with people talking, teammates 'coaching', refs watching, and you trying to remember marks, program order, attachments, etc you really have NO idea.

We coaches saw kids step up and try, kids inviting teammates to participate.  We saw them realize they need to practice, and just how much we need to teach file management ; )  We saw things click as to why something wasn't working, or how they could better improve something.  And yes, we saw stress, and fear, and thoughts of failure, but gracious professionalism ran its course as well.  We were so very proud of all of them on Monday... can't wait to see how they do at Regionals!

Life Skills

Saturday, if you looked for us, you would have found us in Greensboro, NC at NC A & T University.  NC A & T hosted this year's NC FLL State Tournament.

FLL or FIRST Lego League "introduces younger students to real-world engineering challenges by building LEGO-based robots to complete tasks on a thematic playing surface. FLL teams, guided by their imaginations and adult coaches, discover exciting career possibilities and, through the process, learn to make positive contributions to society."  Oh, but it is so much more...

Not only do they build lego robots but they program them, they research the year's topic, they come up with an original solution to a problem, and they present all these things to judges.  FIRST Lego League teaches many life skills far beyond the science and technology.

My husband and i like FLL because on top of academically challenging our children it helps teach them about teamwork, team spirit, communication, interviewing, courtesy, on the spot and critical thinking.  They learn to trust their ideas and question them as well.  They learn to push themselves beyond their initial ideas to look further up and out.  They learn to ask for help, teach others, find solutions or create your own quality one if none exist or are appropriate.  And they learn to do all these things while still working within rules and guidelines, while being good sports (FIRST calls it gracious professionalism). Gosh, and there is so much more....

Its definitely NOT about the Legos.

Anyway - the kids had a very long, very tiring, very educational day.  But they enjoyed it.  It was actually a pretty tough day as many things did not go as planned. 

 We left Raleigh around 5:00am so Dad could be there for the volunteer meeting (each team has to provide one in this particular state's events.) Team check in started around 7am.  Once checked in we headed to the Pit - the area set up for teams to use as their 'home base' for the day.  We get a 6 foot table and four chairs.  If you're lucky you're next to a wall and can then spread out a bit more ...we were lucky.

The kids and i spent the morning running around between the practice runs, teamwork interview, robot design interview, and project interview. 

We had our own small cheering squad....

and photographer (hopefully one day we'll get the pictures! :  ) )

The afternoon was spent practicing, 

queueing,

 and competing.

Overall it was a good day.  They did not win any awards but came away happy with their presentations and a little frustrated with their table runs.  The best part of the day was...

Ladybug: "the break in the afternoon" (they got to shoot hoops and play skeet ball)

T: "Just being there." (Not everyone goes to state.  They won 2nd place Robot Design at their qualifier to earn a place.)

B: "The robot design interview, because that was our best chance of winning something."

Me?  I liked spending the day with my kids! 

Guest Writer!

I am B, today's guest writer. I am part of a FIRST Lego League team. FLL is an worldwide challenge for kids ages 9-14 created by FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. FLL is very fun. I love building with Legos and designing robots, so the main challenge part is perfect for me. We also do a themed Find-a-problem-and-solve project. This year the theme is Biomedical engineering, and my team designed a portable oxygen concentrator for people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, a disease that weakens the lungs. My team had to do a qualifying regional tournament, and we placed 2nd in robot design, a qualifying position. Our state tournament is this Saturday, and I hope we do well.



Taking a break - State Qualifier for North Carolina



Ready to go! - State Qualifier for North Carolina



Settin' up - Lansdale Tune-up, Lansdale, PA

Mallow Man

We had fun!

GO MIGHTY MARSHMALLOWS!