During the summer we have held Robotics camps, inviting kids from the community and our school to experience Lego robots. Part of the week includes a trip to Kettering University in Flint, which certainly peeks the interest of the kids who attend. They love seeing the different types of robots and building bottle rockets and simple programming.

 

Christ Connectors, also tried something new this year. In September our school held a family game night. We received approval from our principal to set up a Robotics game which combined aspects of FLL and FTC for kids and parents to play together. Contestants began by programing simple pre-made FLL robots to travel autonomously from one end of the playing field to the other, going around a LEGO “glyph” in the center of the field, which represented a Glyph from the FTC field. An FTC team member taught each person how to program the robot, allowing them to experiment with speed and rotation. They were given three test tries. On the fourth the two people who programmed would take turns at the table racing their robot around the glyph and across the finish line. All this took place while a countdown clock was running on the gym wall. Two more of our FTC team members acted like the referees at an FLL competition. They had a sheet to check off and contestants signed off when their run was done. While people waited their turn at programming, they were able to watch demonstrations given with our FTC Robot prototype. Many students and parents took an interest in this. We also handed out fliers to everyone in attendance explaining FIRST and our specific programs at Christ the King. It was a great turn out. We even shook the principal's hand and he mentioned how great it was in the school newsletter. We plan on continuing this every year.

 

When our community celebrated the beginning of the Christmas season, our FLL and FTC teams were scheduled to help with games and decorating trees at Moore Shoreline Buick and Chevrolet in Sebewaing. We knew that we would be at our second qualifier on that day, so we prepared fliers and gathered other materials for our FLL team to use on that evening. 

​

This summer we participated in the 2018 Michigan Sugar Festival Parade.  We made our robot put candy down a chute instead of throwing it.  The response from the crowd was amazing.  They loved how interactive our robot was.  We won the 1st Place Judges Award along with $35!

​

We presented our Robot Sage to the community when our school hosted a Trunk or treat.  Over 500 kids come to this event plus their parents. We showed some the missions our robot had to complete and answered any questions they had.

​

After we completed our 2018 season we were able to help out the Courageous Cougars FTC #15593 a local rookie team.  Since we were done using our field pieces we let them borrow it so that they could practice for there first competition.  We also gave them examples of our engineering notebook.

​

Our team worked with the Courageous Cougars to present FLL and FTC to our area Lutheran School teachers at a conference at Valley Lutheran High School in Saginaw.  Hopefully, they will want to start their own teams at their schools.

​

​

​