Lego League

Last year Jacob discovered a club at school called "Lego League".  In Lego League the kids spend 6 weeks building a robot to perform a series of tasks on a game board.  They have 2 1/2 minutes for their robot to run its course and see how many points they can rack up.  They also have a research project and skit to do along with the robotics part.  This year a teacher at school "sponsored" their club.  Which means he sat back and left it all to the kids and 2 weeks before the competition they had no workable robot and half of a skit.  So Patrick took over the robot mentoring roll and I helped push the research project together and had them get the skit ironed out.  So glad we had our own robotic table at the house and could host all the get togethers to get it together.

Our first 2 runs on the competition table were so so.  One went well, the other went so so.  At the practice table the kids had a perfect run.  The whole room cheered.  Then we headed in to the competition room for the final run.

What do supportive siblings do to keep themselves occupied at Lego League?  Bug Robots and My Lil Pony!

Final competition run.  Jacob and Valerie ran the robot...which means they sent it on the missions and then switched out parts when it came back to base and sent it out on another mission.  We weren't too far out of first place but it wasn't meant to be.  Our robot didn't just get off kilter...it got sent to another orbit.

Out of the 30 teams there that day 10 were sent on to regionals.  They were awarded based on robot design, robot performance, teamwork, etc.  We won an award in robot performance and were moved on to the next round.

At the next level the kids performed well, but glitches happen and once again we had robot malfunctions.  In the end it was a great learning experience but a high level of stress and frustration too.  The next round was to be in St. Louis and it was one of those moments where we were cheering on the team to do well...but not TOO well.