Another year of FLL done. This year the team won the Teamwork award at the first FLL competition then moved on. Not much was done to improve after the first event, so no awards at the second event. This was the last year for much of the team that we started with. Here are pictures from the first competition (in 2012) and here are pictures of their robot.
We finally got Margaret’s loom all hooked up and going. She is already getting better and better. Our big obstacle now is figuring out a good way to wind the bobbins so we can keep her moving. Also, we need to tie her down because as she weaves she moves across the floor.
Lego is finally over for the year. We have had the Lego field setup kit in our living room since August. This year was our most successful ever. We made it to the regional championship. We won the project award this year as well. The kids project was the Lunch Tockz. It was a little electronic device that monitored time and temperature of food in your lunch box to tell you whether it was save to eat or not. The kids worked really hard. Overall, they did extremely well. At the competitions, they generally only give 1 award to a team. Otherwise, I think that we may have one more than one. The kids did really well in all the presentations (Robot Design, Teamwork, Project).
Another year, another FLL (First Lego League) team. This year there were more tournaments than ever with more teams. Our team managed to not win any awards at the tournament, but did qualify for the Silicon Valley Regional. They are now busily preparing for the next tournament in January.
Margaret had a good year this year at Cross Country. She has gotten much faster and finished consistently 6th in most of her meets. She made it to the County Champions Meet and finished 8th. We still haven’t figure out where Margaret got the running gene. This year she did learn that if you work hard at something, you get better. She ran with the faster group this year. She really improved.
Sam, Margaret, and Elizabeth went to some Halloween party that a friend of Margaret’s was having. They got dressed up. I didn’t go, I am the Halloween scrooge.
Margaret did track this year. She chose high jump, long jump, triple jump and 60m hurdles for her events. Each meet she got better. We still haven’t figured out where the running genes she somehow got came from.
We decided it was time for our kids to do Wolverine Bowl. They did well and they liked it, however, Margaret can’t seem to make it across the flat part. She ends up at some point catching an edge and going down. She did a face plant the last time down (we all missed it).
We had Margaret’s birthday in Tahoe this year. It was ski week for us. The Wallins were up with us for her birthday.
Margaret (and the rest of the Reassembling Robots) did well enough at the Google FLL tournament to make it to the next level. This tournament was much more like the first round tournaments that the kids have been to. The judging seemed more similar to those tournaments as well. It was an ALL day event and our team didn’t advance, but they still had fun and it was a good experience.