We were invited to take part in “Robot Day,” a day focused on bringing in different robotics programs and showing them to kids and adults. The kids we talked to loved our robots, and we were able to talk to adults about the program while the kids played. There were also some Lego Mindstorms robots, as well as other FTC teams.

We volunteered at a Lego League tournament with our coach as the tournament director. We helped do things like scorekeeping, score running, timekeeping, helping out teams, and running activities in FLL Jr. This is our first year out of FLL after being in it for 4 years and it’s awesome to find out how it all works behind the scenes. It was a blast and we hope to do it again.

Our team was invited to sell concessions at an FLL tournament in Chippewa Middle School so we could raise money for our team. We had 2 concession locations at the event, the “dollar store” and the main concessions. The dollar store was located at a table next to the performance area and had cheaper food items. The main concessions in the school cafeteria had all the lunch items and other cheaper items as well. We had fun selling concessions at the tournament and learned about things such as inventory, cost analysis, working with vendors to order food and staffing based on rush periods.  It was a great way to earn money while learning skills we can use again at other events.

We went to Hayes Elementary to Demo about FIRST and engineering. During our time there we set up stations for FLL Jr. FLL, and FTC. The kids then went around each of the stations to learn more about FIRST and the different types. They got to drive our FTC robot through obstacles, program our FLL robot to complete many missions, and learn more about FLL Jr. Overall, the demo went really well. The kids loved the FTC robot and they all got driver’s licenses. Also, the kids had lots of fun learning more about FIRST.

We did a fundraiser at the Shoreview Jersey Mike’s to raise money for extra parts. All members of our team took at least two 2 – hour shifts. During the fundraiser, we also dealt with some robot problems, that we eventually fixed. It was fun talking to people and explaining how the robot worked as well as sharing the word of FIRST. People loved our robot drivers licenses (mostly the kids) and our business cards, they also seemed to like the idea of students learning engineering skills.