Unfortunately, we hit another snag. This snag had to do with the Powerpoint lesson I had prepared. It must have been on another flash drive, because it wasn't on the one I had brought. I guess we put "Flexible Thinking" into practice. I wouldn't be able to do everything if it weren't for the help of the Parents, Jane and Sci-Quest.
What we did....we used our imagination and built little miniature robots. This was a lesson to see how creative we are. We then glued the robots into a plastic ball. We got to take our ornaments home as a present from my son, who has been learning about giving to others (which he does readily). We also had a another building activity to learn how to build strong structures out of Marshmallows, Gumdrops, Toothpicks, and Spaghetti.
We learned a little about First Lego League and our Mindstorms robot kits. We learned that it is important not to run our robots on the tables so they don't break. We also learned what the missions and project aspect were all about in the FLL.
We rolled out our puzzle mat and discussed how we were going to build, program and then create our own missions. The missions will be geared around our interest, which are varied.
We also saw a demonstration of two robots I had created to show what a robot was (Spider and Mini-Rex) and does. We are going to be so prepared for next years challenge instead of trying to cram in how to build and program and research in such a short time.
Our social skills lesson dealt with teamwork, and being flexible.
I saw a lot of smiles on faces and excitement in their eyes. The kids are a joy to work with. They have some of the most creative minds and I love how they associate things.
My favorite quote of the whole evening was when we were building strong structures. We were about to test the structures out when, one of the kids mentioned that (I don't remember the exact wording), ... we should have gotten some catastrophic builder's insurance just in case his group's structure wasn't sound. LOL! That was perfect and made my night!