Robotics Camp 2016

On August 15th and 16th, we held our very first summer camp. This was a two day camp, in which we worked with upcoming 4th through 8th graders using LEGO Mindstorms. These are the same machines that will be used in our FLL (First Lego League) teams. On the first day, the kids built towers with hard spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. They had 2 minutes to complete the challenge. Afterwards, they looked at everyone else's as we explained how their towers were feats of engineering. They then had 2 more minutes to rebuild their towers using a new strategy.

Next, the kids built their robots, with the help of the team. When each robot was finished, they took the robots to the library to start programming. They started with the basics of moving forward and making the arm on the front move up and down.

On the second day, we started working on the Mindstorms as soon as kids got to the high school. We announced our challenge- following a line on a paper using a color sensor. Using this information, the kids started to learn how to turn and use the color sensor. We had many successful with this challenge, and they worked all day on this. When it was done, we were sad to know it was over, but we all had a lot of fun. We are excited to do more of these camps in the future.