Survey for Children and Adults

Friends, Family, and LEGO Robot fans,

We are headed to the Razorback Invitational on Wednesday. We are are attempting one last improvement to our team project and we need your help.

We need people with children ages 2-6 to have their children take our brief survey that includes a short 3.5 minute educational video the team created.

We also need adults to take a brief survey that includes a short 4.5 minute educational video. Adults need to work regularly with children ages 2-6, such as parents, grandparents, babysitters, nannies, preschool teachers, early elementary school teachers, etc.

If you are able, please help us out! Please take the surveys below and share our survey with others!

Survey for Children:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BJG8MDD

Survey for Adults:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YLF38RY

Thanks for your help!

You can have a LEGO field set

Wisconsin FIRST donated field kits to us to sell as a fundraiser for the Razorback Invitational international tournament we will be competing at in May. If you'd like to purchase a FIRST LEGO League field kit from a previous year, please check out this flyer.

Recycle Rap

We are working on furthering our project by creating our first sample Sesame Street short introducing our added character, Recycle Bin Benny!

We created the costumes, wrote the script, directed it, and acted in it. It was so much fun! Now the video will just take a few days to edit. Can't wait to see the final production!

Kenneth voiced Benny from the outside

TEAM always has fun together!

We also made an impromptu Recycle Rap video with Benny. Enjoy!!!

Rethinking Robot

We are working hard on restrategizing and improving our robot and missions for our upcoming Razorback Invitational tournament!

It's Official!

Woohoo! It's official! The Razorback Invitational tournament announced our registration!
How cool to be the 48th team for T.E.A.M. #4889!

Volunteering with FLL Jr.

We had a grand time this morning volunteering at a FIRST LEGO League Junior Exposition put on by FLL team #2430, LOL (Lots Of  LEGOs). They're an awesome team we've gotten to know over the years, and they put on a great event. This was our first time at an FLL Junior expo and it was really fun!

The kids were ages 5 - 9 years old with most being 6 or 7. They had such enthusiasm and passion for what they learned! They had so much to say, and even more to show the judges. Their cleverly designed LEGO models were most impressive.

Two of our mentors and coaches judged, and another was a time keeper along with Kenneth and Jessica.

This video explains more about FIRST LEGO League Junior.

Fundraising

Now we get to prepare for the
Razorback International Invitational in
Fayetteville, Arkansas! 

First step, fundraising.....

Step 1: We are preparing to do fundraising through corporate sponsors.

Step 2: Also, we have a SUPER FUN FUNDRAISER going on at the Little Swiss Clock Shop in Downtown Waukesha. For every $10 you donate, you get a LEGO pice to help build our LEGO model of the Arkansas State flag!!!

Stop in the store and make a cash or check donation and build the flag.
270 W Main Street, Waukesha, 53186
(During construction, the entrance from the Riverfront Plaza parking lot behind the store is still available.)

Step 3: Or, send a tax deductible check to the team!!! 

Make the check to: 4-H Education

Mail the check to: Wendy Copeland

                              912 Magnolia Drive

                              Waukesha, WI 53188

What we need:

$10 feeds a team member 2 lunches.

$40 pays for parking for one vehicle for the tournament. (We need 3 vehicles.)

$100 feeds a team member for the whole tournament. (We have 4 team members and 3 coaches.)

$100 pays for additional parts we need for our robot.

$100 pays for one hotel room for the team. (We need 3 hotel rooms.)
$120 pays for team buttons to give to other teams.

$150 pays for a new EV3 Mindstorms brick.

$175 pays for round-trip gas for 1 vehicle. (We need three vehicles.)

$350 pays for one hotel room for 4 nights. (We need three rooms.)

...plus additional expenses not listed here.

All sponsors will be listed in our Pit Display and listed on our team blog.

Extra Extra!

The Waukesha Freeman did a story on us!

State 2nd Place Champions!

We won Champions Runners up at the Wisconsin State tournament! 
Next we move on to the international Razorback Invitational tournament in Arkansas!

What a great tournament. We also received nominations for The Presentation Award, and the Programming Award.

A Gracious Highfive ;)

For one of today's teamwork exercises, we were given a deck of cards and were told we had a minute and a half to "draw a picture" that represents gracious professionalism. We created team members from two different teams high-fiving!  :D

We LOVE encouraging other teams! It's one of our most favorite things to do in all of FLL! We can't wait for the state tournament where we get to compete with and cheer on other teams!

Download our Stickers!

Have you seen our skit presentation for the 2015-2016 Trash Trek season? In there we explain our three-part solution.

One part is our downloadable stickers. They are available now! You can print them and use them in your household or classroom.

Just attach them to items you want young children to recognize as recyclable and show them where to recycle the items.

Also, to encourage them to use the recycling bin, and to remind them about recycling, you can print a larger image of Benny the Recycle Bin and attach it to your recycle bin in your house, outside, in your classroom, and everywhere you toss recyclables.

If the link above didn't work try this: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_PAr03IvATaaWhFSmJLQjRSNEU&usp=sharing

Recycle Rap
by Benny the Recycle Bin

On bottled water and other kids things,
Look no further than the packaging.
See my photo, and then you'll know,
Where to put that recyclable.

Recycle, yes or no? The label lets you know!

Can You Help Us?

We are struggling with precision and repeatability with our robot! Can you help us?

We use the EV3 gyro sensor to drive straight and turn precisely. But the gyro values seem to change over time. This is a big problem for us.

For example, when we drive the robot in a straight line across the field, it starts ending as much as 10 beams to the left (N on a field). Slowly, it moves right to be at what should be 0*. Then, it begins to migrate further to the right (S on a field).

Turns behave the same way. A 90* turn goes too far, then over time, it's correct, then not far enough.

So, over the coarse of a programming session of 30-60 minutes or more, we have to keep changing our gyro values.

This is an issue at a tournament. It's impossible to know exactly which values to use.

Please leave us a comment if you have suggestions.

Thank you!

Code For Our Test

Dinner With The T.E.A.M.

You know the team spends a lot of time at your house when Hauken gets out the frying pan, wooden spoon, and oil to cook his own pork fried rice for dinner.
Last time Kenneth brought a crockpot with his dinner!

Our Mentors Disappeared!?

Today's meeting kicked off with a sign on the door saying, "What would you do if your coaches and mentors disappeared for one meeting? Hmm...". A judge had asked us that question at our sectional tournament. So our coaches were inspired to find out!

So we ran our meeting all by ourselves for two hours. We did really well too! We started out by setting goals for the meeting. Then we practiced our skit a couple times. Next we created and completed our own teamwork exercises. After that we broke into two sub-teams. One worked on building attachments and rethinking some programming and strategy. For inspiration, the other group did research on how other teams accomplish certain robot tasks. Finally we met back together to see what we could do with everything we had learned.

When our coaches joined us for the end of the meeting, we discussed what we learned. It was really cool to see what we were capable of on our own. It really gave us a good sense of teamwork and leadership and better feel for what the role of the coach means to us. Actually, it was so fun, we talked of possibly trying it again sometime!

After dinner, some of the team stayed extra and worked further on attatchment designs and strategy for our robot. We also began testing our gyro sensors to see how consistent and accurate we can get them and which one of the two we own works best.

It was a neat meeting that was productive and gave us new experiences in a fun way!

Waukesha JanBoree

Each year at the Waukesha JanBoree, we bring our robot and our project display boards to share with our community. We have many families who come back year after year to see our team, our robot, and see what new thing we invented!

This year we displayed at the library for about two hours and introduced hundreds of people to FIRST! We had so many interested people, it was hard to keep up! Some families were so excited about what we showed them that they came back to our table two, even three times!

Overall it was a fun and successful day.