The Doctor is Coming...

The Doctor is Coming...

 

We knew we needed to come up with a skit for our presentation.  To make it fun we decided none other than A Dr. Who theme will do, since Dr. Who is a senior too.  

One of our kids, Ethan had been playing around with stop animation videos.  We used this app

to create the video.

Stop Motion Studio App

                                                                

The skit was about Dr. Who coming to help another senior, who was a Weeping Angel,  with his arthritis.  We had a lot of fun creating it.  

Next we created our team spirit hats.

Each kid created there own hat from a pattern.  Then they decorated it.  Pretty good, huh?

Next we all drew pictures to vote on for the t-shirt.  This is the one we chose drawn by Lydia...

On the back we put this picture...

Here is what the shirts looked like...

We also made Sonic Screwdrivers.  

In our video Dr. Who cured the Weeping Angel with a Sonic Screwdriver.

After that we visited Maker's Local 256.  We had a personal tour.  

Here is some of the photos we took while there.

We got to meet our favorite Robot.  We learned what went on in the shop.  

We finished our NXT Robot with the inspiration of going to see a real one.

And did test runs of the missions.  

I was real impressed with how Douglas learned how to use the color sensors on the NXT to figure out how to differentiate between the different colored medicine bottles.  

Caleb worked on the solution project with his Grandfather.  We each had a role.

His project helped seniors lift up their legs so they would not have to bend over so far.

Meanwhile, we decided that with the help of Jennifer Paulsen from Makers Local 256 we should practice doing a skit in front of the judges and use the video presentation at our table.  

Next, we went to a assisted living home where we demonstrated our missions and project.  

Caleb had been working on the project.  The senior citizens gave us some valuable input.  

We worked on the Tri-Fold and included this picture...

Here is how it turned out...

The Tardis in the picture spun around with a motor.

Zachary and Ethan's Grandmother come talk to us about Arthritis.  A Professor visited our group to talk about the cognitive effects of aging.  Last but not least Laura Parks from Task came out and did a demonstration on assistive technology and what seniors might need.  She had some interesting gadgets.  We put a few of the examples on our table by our tri-fold.

Some highlights we unfortunately did not get a picture of was when Michael bowled a strike the first time when attempting the bowling mission.  

Michael also helped Challenger Middle's Team by bringing his mission board and missions to them when theirs had not yet arrived.  He also helped them brainstorm some solutions.

We learned that you should always read the instructions when putting together the mission board.  We could not figure out why we didn't have enough dual-lock pieces.  It finally dawned on us.

and last but not least...

I have a tendency not to do this as a coach. 

The Table

Okay, I said I would post about how I made a portable FLL table.  Before I do, let me tell you how I came up with the idea.

Problem:  I needed a portable table that would fit in a Mini-Cooper.  I have to transport the table back and forth once a week (loading and unloading) to where our FLL team meets.

Research: I looked online at tables some others teams had built (styro-foam borders and board), but nothing seemed practical for what I needed.  They looked like they would get broken too easy and were quite expensive.  I got to brainstorming.

Solution:  Here is what I came up with for the off season.  After the fact I had built this, I saw another team had used some foam mats with wooden borders.  That would have made life a little bit easier if I had found those instructions previously than figuring it out on my own.  I always have to do everything the hard way.

All you need to do is put it together and put a mat on top and you are good to go.  The mat featured here was from the Power Puzzles season.  It was given to us by the local middle school.  What I liked about it was the puzzle pieces.  You usually associate puzzle pieces with Autism, so it was perfect.  Asperger's Syndrome is on the Autism Spectrum.

 As you can see we do not have the Lego Pieces for the mat.  We kind of created our own missions which were very basic.  We did one mission per kid to give them a sense of accomplishment.

Here is how I made it.

What you need:

Play mats from Sam's Club.
Foam pipe insulators from Home Depot or Lowe's 
Edge already on mat

Cost around $30 total

First you need to put 8 squares together with the side pieces attached laying flat.  Then you flip it over to the grey side.  Number each piece and draw a diagram on grey side for kids to be able to put together themselves. 

I also labeled the side foam pieces so they would know how to put them on the foam table.  They were labeled B for Bottom, S for Side.  I had to distinguish which side they were , left or right.  So "BL" would go on the bottom left side, and "2S" would be on the second mat, side piece.  It took the kids a few times to master it.  Labeling is very important because you want to put it together the same way every time.  If the kids ask why something doesn't line up I will ask them if they followed the diagram.

Then you flip all the side pieces of the foam table so they are perpendicular.  Here is what I mean...

Here is another example looking from another direction. I made sure I locked the edge by pushing it in as shown in the bottom picture.

After that, you cut the foam inserts to the size of each individual square.  At first I left the pieces long on the sides, but It was a pain to carry.  To get them to fit in a bag I ended up making them the same size as the foam side pieces.

Then after I had turned all the sides up, I put the foam insulators over the side pieces.  You can wrap them to fit over the whole side piece or you can just lay them on top of the side piece.

The foam insulators go around the whole outside edge.  This will keep your robot within the confines of the table.  You can set this up on a table with legs or on the floor.

After I put the foam insulators on, I laid down the Puzzle Power mat and put Velcro between the mat and the foam table.  If you don't put the table squares together the same way the Velcro won't line up. 

Here is the finished table before adding the Power Puzzle mat!

another picture...

There you go...a portable table that doesn't weigh much and can be transported in a Mini-Cooper.  I do not know how this would work in a Smart car.

My regular season mat has the wooden boards assembled together with corner brackets and straight metal pieces for the middle sides.  I also used an extra piece of wood to stabilize the middle sections.

I drew a diagram on the foam table to let the kids know how to put together the wooden boards.  Each side and middle has a baggie full of wing-nuts and screws labeled.  The corner brackets are labeled too.

This can also be transported in my Mini-Cooper.  The only problem since I added the boards is, I can't fit my kid in the car.  Oh well, you can't have everything! :)

The Challenge

As an official First Lego League Team, we will get the opportunity to participate in this year's challenge which is called "Senior Solutions".

We are supposed to explore how we can help improve the quality of life for seniors by helping them continue to be independent, engaged, and connected in their communities.  We will do this by participating in 3 parts - the Robot Game, the Project, and the Core Values. The Robot Game and Project are what teams do, and the Core Values guide teams through the experience.  Here is a link if you want to learn more about the Challenge go to http://firstlegoleague.org/challenge/2012seniorsolutions.

To start off we received a kit that had the Robot Mat and Missions.

Our next job will be to figure out how to program and build an robot to run the course completing the missions in 2 1/2 minutes.  We will get 3 chances to get our best score. 

Then as a team we will explore the topic.  With the topic we are supposed to

• Find a senior partner
• Identify and learn about a problem faced by seniors
• Create an innovative solution to the problem we identify
• Share our problem and solution with others


The Core Values we will use while doing these two things are:

• We are a team.
• We do the work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors.
• We know our coaches and mentors don't have all the answers; we learn together.
• We honor the spirit of friendly competition.
• What we discover is more important than what we win.
• We share our experiences with others.
• We display Gracious Professionalism^® and Coopertition^® in everything we do.
• We have FUN!

It is all a lot harder then it sounds.



We have already had a lot of fun exploring this topic.  Last week we put on an "Empathy Suit".  Basically it was a suit that mimicked what it felt like to be a Senior.  With a little duck tape, anything is possible.

Here is my son and another kid having a staring contest through reading glasses that mimic how it feels not to be able to see as clearly.

Here is one kid looking at the missions trying to figure out how we will do them.

And here is my son and another kid putting the models on the table.  Everyone sorts, everyone sets up, and everyone participates.  The last one "everyone participates" is hard for some of our kids to do.  We are taking little steps to let them know their contribution is valued. 

Other things we have done lately is following the FLL Blog post.  From that we learned about Flip the Robot and the adventures he/she? has.  Also we read a Doctor Seuss book about getting old.  Wait till I tell them about another Doctor who is old.  They will have fun with that.

Well, I am off tweaking my table (building portable sides).  Now, where did I put that Sonic Screwdriver???

Team 122

We are officially First Lego League Team 122!

Here are some pictures I found in Google images about the number 122.

Hey, how did that Dalek get in there?


It seems like ages ago but, ...on the first official day, May 6, I registered RoboSkills within the first hour. By the time registration is closed there will be thousands of teams. 

We have a new Behavior and Social Skills Coach who has worked with children on the spectrum. Her name is Caroline Madsen. She is wonderful!!!  She used to be my son's aide at church (so I am kind of biased) and decided to go into special education because of him. Ms. Jane is going to be moving to further her education and she is having a baby. We will dearly miss her!  We wish the best for her.

What has changed since I last posted is, we are now meeting in the Community Room at Publix (Thank You Publix!). Sci-Quest has summer camps during the summer and so they have their classrooms filled. We have met all summer long.

We are now, after having built a few robots, and learning a little bit about programming, challenging ourselves on the puzzle mat to see if we can accomplish some made-up missions.  I don't have all the lego pieces for the puzzle power mat, so we have improvised and come up with a couple of our own.

You are probably wondering how do we set up the mat when we dont have a table. I have come up with a portable mat that is different then the one that everyone has seen on line.  It is easier to build or put together (no building required) and lighter.  The idea came together when I was trying to figure out how in the world am I going to fit a table in my Mini Cooper?  Spoilers....will have to tell all about it next post.  I showed some other teams what I had come up with and they loved it and said I should sell it as a fundraiser for our team.  Can you copyright a mat design???  Now, off to make a bag to carry it in....

So many post, so little time!

Well, I have let a lot of time slip by between postings.  I guess I will have to give you the whirlwind tour of some of the stuff we have been doing.  We have only missed one class due being out of town (All State Orchestra).  Well, actually it would be more like 3 classes, if you combine Spring Break.

We had some more lessons in Programming.  We learned about the move block.

That was fun to see the reaction on the kids faces as they controlled their first robot.  The next class they got to control the movements of a NXT (child) with the use of a dolly to get to the designated spot.  That was a whole lot of fun because if the command was invalid, you couldn't move.  It is a great way to internalize how to program.

We had a few lessons around the Angry Bird theme.  The first lesson was to program and control the robot to crash into the Pigs.  Basically we had to program a series of commands to get to the Pigs fortress.  We also built Catapults and shot off the birds to land on the Pigs fortress.  We had to learn that we needed to be real quiet or else the Catapult would accidentally fire.

In Social Skills during this time we learned about one person talking at a time. If the child wanted to say something while I was talking, they had to press the sound command on the Laminated NXT.

During Spring Break a couple of kids were lucky to go to LegoLand in Florida and the new Lego Discovery Center in Atlanta, GA.

When we got home from Spring Break we had an Easter Egg Hunt with our NXT's and then got to do a real Easter Egg Hunt in the Museum.  That was a lot of fun.  This is what our robots looked like:

 This robot came from http://www.nxtprograms.com/claw_car/index.html

This site is a great resource to building different kinds of robots.  I feel that they will be able to think of more options building a robot for FLL if they are exposed to many different designs. 

Sci-Quest has been so accommodating and we are very grateful for them.

We also learned about gears.  We have been doing a couple lessons on building with gears.  I let the kids go into the Sci-Quest Museum to find objects that used gears.  I think we found almost around 25 gear combinations including Pulleys.  The kids got to take home a handout of different gear combinations that were illustrated.

We weaved our social skills lesson around the gears talking about conversations.  Conversations need to mesh like gears do and flow slowly.  The Green Zone illustrates this in the picture below.

We practiced our skills playing Lego Games which have been very popular.  As we get towards the end of the year it will be harder and harder to capture their attention due to the excitement of the end of the school year.

We still have lots to learn.  It is hard to capture the kids attention but when we do, you know it.  They have a great time.  When they are too excited we have a harder time.  You have to find the middle ground and accommodate all the kids who are on different levels.

Next things to think about is, "Do we want to form a non-profit?" so we can pay someone to do the social skills?  We would also like to earn dollars so we can buy at least one kit per child, and one resource parts kit per child.  I have supplemented the legos with ones I have brought from home.  Well, this is just something to think on because there is a lot involved in forming a non-profit.  I don't know if I am ready for that.