First Lego League: Robotics Competition

December 5-6 was Danielle's Robotics Competition. She started doing Robotics in March of this year, and has been working hard with the coach, Miss Liberty, and the other 20 kids. They raised funds by selling snow cones every Friday at school and even at our summer neighborhood party. Danielle has stayed after school until four on Tues and Thurs every week since March and even went to a Robotics camp during the summer. I am so glad Danielle was able to have the opportunity for this Robotics program. The same program costs 800.00 at a summer camp at NASA and we got it for free. Miss Liberty is the kind of person that you don't meet every day, and she LOVES Danielle. It was inspiring to me to see one person make such a difference. She convinced our principal to let her have the robotics program here, then put her incredible talents to work and provided an amazing learning and confidence building experience for 21 kids. She put countless hours in, probably 20-40 a week, and was only paid for 3 a week. I am always grateful when Danielle or any of my kids can have the influence of other positive people in their life.

So, on Saturday, we left the school at 7am and I was a driver and a chaperone for the weekend. I was so grateful that I could go, and share this experience with my daughter. We definitely had fun. We went on all the rides and ate our sack lunches and snacks that were packed by parents. Miss Liberty led the way again with fun. Every time we saw her, she would start a chant : "When I say Reagan, you say Robotics, Reagan! Robotics! Reagan! Robotics! We came back to the hotel for a home cooked meal that was cooked by two other moms that came. We spent the rest of the evening doorbell ditching (sorry, I don't know what to call it in a hotel) the boys room that was around the corner from ours. The kids had a final meeting with their teams and Miss Liberty as well. Danielle's team was X-Stream Team. Danielle was the team leader. Originally she was not, but the first team leader wanted Danielle to take his place, and the team all voted her in. However, Miss Liberty wanted to give someone else a chance so, as not to play favorites. That lasted about a day. Some people are not comfortable being the boss, Danielle definitely is and has been like that her whole life :) They had lost all their programming for their robot about three days before competition and Danielle's good friend Indy had to try to salvage what little she could. The whole team took it in stride, and felt good about their project and presentation, which was the other part of the competition.

The next day, Sunday, was the competition. I was so nervous for them. The parents had packed lunches and snacks again and after the complimentary hot breakfast that morning (love Residence Inn) we headed to Legoland to be there by 8am. They waited for their turn to perform their skit and present their research project. Bailey, the team leader for the other team, was having to re-type a form that had been erased. No one ever lost their cool with these little hiccups. It was amazing how calm the kids were. They had to exhibit "gracious professionalism" at all times, that being one of the core values of the First Lego League. There were secret judges watching the teams and how they behaved when not in competition. While waiting, Miss Liberty had Danielle lead some chants:

All tasks by the way, had to be performed by the children, the research, the skit (Danielle wrote the one for her team) and the programming. The coaches were there to only guide, that is all they could do. The kids had to come up with all ideas. The parents were given strict instructions to not help or tell the kids how to do anything. After the skit and presentation, they were extensively questioned as to how they came up with their idea and who did what, etc. Danielle's team was one of 9 teams out of 52 to get a "call back." So, they had to do the whole thing over again! The task the First Lego League gave all the teams was to improve transportation. Danielle's team thought out of the box and made their project on how to transport electricity faster and more efficiently. They came up with the idea that electricity could travel through our current water pipes. They prevented people from getting electrocuted when just drinking water, by purifying the water first. In their research they found that electricity could not travel through purified water. Their skit explained all of this with the students dressed up as water, electricity, and super filters.

The next part of the day was supporting the lead programmers from both teams as they took their robots up on a stage with tables. Every team constructed the same table to program their robots with and three replicas were set up on the stage, where three teams could compete at a time. They had MC's and cameras that projected what was happening on the tables up onto a big screen. There was three rounds. Their team ended up getting a decent score for their robot part, considering that they had to do a lot of catching up at the last minute. X-Stream team ended up winning third place for project and presentation. The other team, G.O.A.L. won third place for team work, another one of First Lego League's core values. Danielle's best friend Bailey was on the other team. Both were rookie teams, and came in thinking this would be a learning year. We were going up against schools and teams that had been doing this for several years, and the age to compete was 9-14. We had all 4th and 5th graders. So, it was an amazing moment when they said both our teams! We were so excited. It was definitely a story book ending for both teams to take home a trophy. Afterwards, we were told that we would have won the team spirit award too, for exhibiting all of the core values of First Lego League so well, but the judges did not know how to give it to just one of our teams! So, instead they are nominating us as a group for a wild card team to compete nationally in April in Atlanta. It would be awesome if we get to go, but honestly, this was enough. It was such an wonderful experience for Danielle. I am so thankful that she had the opportunity.