August 26th Meeting

We had our first official meeting tonight!  We worked on building out the mission models and watched the first couple of videos about this year's missions.  (If you missed them, or want to watch them again, you can see them all here: http://www.firstlegoleague.org/challenge/2015trashtrek).

As I mentioned in the email I sent out yesterday, we have a Twitter account now...our twitter name is @dexbotsFLLTeam.

I wanted to give a shout out to Kristen for hanging out with us tonight and bringing her laptop so the kids had another device to use for building instructions.  Having the extra adult at the meetings made things run very smoothly.

To close out, I thought I would add a few pictures from the meeting tonight.

First Meeting

We only had a couple of parent's show up tonight for our first meeting of the season.  We are in need of additional kids to participate this year, so if you know of anyone, please have them contact us at dexbots@gmail.com.

Meeting Minutes

We received the mat and pieces for the competition already, but are still waiting for the build instructions.  FLL said it would be posted this coming Tuesday (the 25th).

We asked parents to be more involved this year to help us help the kids get more done.  In the past, we have not done well on the project because we were very focused on the robot.  Having another adult help will allow us to provide more guidance on the project, and allow us to do much better in that section of the competition.  We have a volunteer that is willing to help out at the meetings.

At this point in time, we are planning on meeting at our house.  We have a big area that we can have the board set up (and leave it set up) for the kids without impacting our living space.  Once we get additional team members, we may change this plan, but for now it stands.

We decided that we are typically going to meet on Monday evenings from 6-7:30pm.  However, since we won't have the build instructions until Tuesday next week, we are going to meet on Wednesday next week from 6-7:30pm.  We will not meet during the first week of September, and since the following Monday is Memorial Day, we will be meeting on Wednesday the 9th from 6-7:30pm.

After that, we will start our normal Monday night schedule.

I will be creating a Google Calendar with the meeting schedule on it to share with everyone.

My action items from the meeting are to make some fliers to send to Dexter schools to get in the monthly email to try to get more kids involved.  Also, I will send the same flyer to Rocks & Robots, Brain Monkey's and our mailing list to have people pass around as they see fit.

Call for kids

It is once again that time of year...First Lego League season.

I don't believe we have many followers of this blog since it is a very seasonal thing, but just in case, I am going to put out the call.  We are a First Lego team in Dexter, Michigan and are looking for kids interested in joining our team.  We have a few that have participated in years past that are planning on participating once again this year, but we would love to get a full team of 10!

If you have a child ages 9-14 (or know someone who does) and live in the Dexter, Michigan area that you think might be interested, please feel free to reach out to us at dexbots@gmail.com.

First Lego League is not just for kids interested in robotics.  There are a wide range of things that the kids get to do during a competition season, including a project where they try to tackle real world problems.  We need kids who are good organizers, good communicators, and those who are just full of team spirit.  We, the coaches, are willing to bring on kids that are interested in the robotics portion as well, and are willing and able to teach them how to program and build the robots!

Every year the kids have a blast, and so do we.  So, please put the word out!