Every year our local library does several “storytimes” where they invite many kids to come and read with the librarians. This year they were unable to do this in person, so they instead decided to host their storytimes online through Facebook Live. We were featured on a pre-recorded storytime as robotics team members. For the storytime, we demonstrated our robot and explained a bit about what FIRST is. We then did a bit of singing and dancing with our robot! We also made a short video detailing the process of how we designed the robot which was featured on the stream. We had a great time showing off our robot and hope we will be able to do it in person next year!

We brought our demo robot and two small SPIKE robots. We introduced ourselves to each of the four groups of kids in turn and told them about FIRST and our robots. Then we let the kids drive the robot and play with the SPIKE bots that could turn when tapped. We gave the kids robot drivers licenses. It was very exciting to see the kids having fun and being interested in robots. Several of the kids were already in FLL and they enjoyed seeing what they could do in the future.

We had lots of fun sorting legos for all the FLL Junior kits. It is good to know that many FLL Junior teams will now have legos to use with all the things they need for the season. This event was very beneficial in its impact on these teams that will now have legos to work with for the season.

We went to the Mounds View High School STEAM Career Fair where we were introduced to different fields of study. While we were there we talked to several companies including the construction company that is currently remodeling our school. We also talked to TESLA works which is a group of makers from the U of M that provides facilities and tools for makers. After visiting the Fair, we went to see the Mounds View FRC team and got the opportunity to drive their robot.

Three of our team members volunteered at FLL State at the Washington Technology Magnet School. One member did robot performance check-in with members from the retired FLL team Berserk, while the other two did judging check-in. We all had a great time at FLL State and hope to volunteer at future FLL competitions.

Our team brought our two robots with us. We allowed kids to try driving our robots and talked to the parents about FIRST and the programs that come after FLL Jr. We handed out robot drivers licenses and stickers to the kids after they drove the robot. It was a ton of fun to talk to the kids as they were all excited to see the big robots, and we would love to volunteer at more of these events in the future.

Our team got the opportunity to demo our robot at the Target Northern Campus in Brooklyn Park with other FLL, FTC, and FRC teams. Four members went to the campus to demo our robot and talk to tons of interested engineers. We got to have a scrimmage with the other FTC teams after the demo along with going on a tour of their Guest Experience Center. We had a great time talking with everyone and hope to do this again in the future. 

We hosted an FLL Jr. Expo where we ran several events. There we showed off our robot and let the kids drive the robots. Once they drove the robot, they got a robot drivers license. We also had a lego pit, a programmable mouse, and a K’Nex building area. We had a lot of fun playing with the little kids and teaching them to drive the robots. We had tons of fun hosting this event and would love to do this again.

We were invited to show off our robots at the Bel Air family science night. The Bel Air family science night was a night for kids and their parents to go through different stations based on ‘STREAM’ qualities. There was another station with our robots that the kids could drive around showing off what you can do with the STEAM qualities when you use them right. We had a lot of fun showing adults what our robots can do and how they work. The kids were allowed to drive our robots through our mini mazes to see how it feels to control the robots. This was a fun experience and we would be happy to do it again!