Mission 2 - 287 Points

Today's programming was a success! We have three missions. This is mission 2.
If we calculated correctly, this mission alone scores us 287 points when completed perfectly! If all three missions go as planned, our maximum score is 696 points.  :D

          Take a look:

...and they EAT!!!

You know he's been working a lot of overtime
when he arrives to the FLL meeting with a crock pot full of his dinner!

A fun note from the coach: 

Normally my team members bring frozen pizza or a sandwich to eat for a snack/meal when they stay late to work late. Today, though, Kenneth arrived with a crock pot with his dinner in it. A FIRST LEGO League team runs on it's stomach!

Project Hint

Here's a little preview of our project! Our innovative solution has three parts too it, but this gives you a little hint to part one. :)

Take Our Survey! (Parts 1 & 2)

We need your help ----->>> FAST!!!

We are days away from our competition and we are trying to gather some last remaining details we need for our project presentation.

**HISTORY**
Let's back up just a moment so you understand better what we are doing. We are a Lego robotics team. We build and compete with a robot made out of Technic's Legos and the robot has to do tasks on a 4'x8' field.

......and each year we are given a challenge to solve with an innovative solution. This year's challenge topic is about trash and recycling. After working with a Montessori educator and principal, the team decided upon helping children ages 2-9 recognize what can be recycled.

**SURVEY**
If you have children ages 2-9 (or know families who have children), please have them take BOTH of our surveys. Because we are using the free version of Survey Monkey, we are unable to link the two surveys together. You must go to the second survey on your own.

     Both are will be linked here for you so you can go from Survey 1 to Survey 2.

     ** FIRST SURVEY: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZVRSZ7F

     ** SECOND SURVEY: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QWN628M

**YOUNG CHILDREN**
Obviously younger children cannot read and type for the survey.
>>Please help your children with the survey.<<
That is....help them to read and type.

It's critical that you do not prompt them for the "right" answers.
We are trying to determine what they already know and if our "Innovative Solution" really will help them to better understand about recycling.

**HOUSE NUMBER**
We do ask for a number to be entered that we can use as an ID number so we can pair the two surveys together. We ask for you house number - just the number, not the whole address.

If you have multiple children in your household, please be sure each child's number is different. You can add a letter after the number so that each child's ID is different.

**SHARING**
Please share this survey far and wide ----->FAST!
We need a lot of children ages 2-9 to take this survey before Friday. We will keep the survey open longer, but we are hoping for many responses before Friday.

Thank you for your help!

Volunteering

Our team and coaches, mentors, and families had a blast volunteering at the Waukesha FLL tournament on Saturday!

Volunteering at the Waukesha FLL Regional Tournament.

We volunteered as queuers, field reseters, and score runners. Our families and mentors helped out as volunteer coordinator, tournament director, pit admin, concessions help, queuing organization, and refereeing.

We even had alumni team members from the first year of this team come out to help too! We love how enthusiastic our past and present team members are for robotics. Some of us will volunteer at both Marquette tournements coming up too!

Current and past team members volunteering.
Back Row: Spencer, Madeline, Andrew, Curtis.
Front Row: Avery, Kenneth, Jessica, Peyton.
Not pictured: Hannah.

At the tournament, it was so fun to hear other team's stories and encourage them. We even had the opportunity to help a few rookie teams with interviewing advice and robot help!

Now we're really excited to get ready to compete in our tournament at Marquette next Sunday!  :D

Having fun queuing!

Morning queuers!

Kennth and youth mentor Curtis lead the audience in The Chicken Dance.

We became expert field resetters!

We did more than watch the teams during their matches. We cheered with them!

Curtis pauses with Jessica who was a score runner and Peyton and Kenneth who were field resetters.

We are a 4-H team. There were many past and current 4-H team members volunteering from our team and the former Legonauts team.

Our coach and youth mentors joined us for a group photo.

Tackling Trash Trek!

Hey guess what!?
It's 2015 Trash Trek season! We are so excited! :D

Here's a little peak at our season start meeting:

We like to invite former team members who graduated from our team to join us as mentors.
We especially appreciate their awesome insight when brainstorming project ideas.
They help keep the creativity flowing freely.

Pizza party/robot board building!! Best way to get started.

Here are some of the T.E.A.M. alumni who joined us this year.
They are always there to help and encourage us anytime.

We have a cute little team of four returning members this year.

Click here for More Kickoff Pictures

Trash Trek!

This year's theme is Trash trek! We are getting excited! Ready for our first kickoff meeting of the season. We already have a whole bunch of brainstorming ideas for potential projects!

Can't wait to see what's in store for us this year!