Sept 22, 2009

At this meeting, we split into groups based on age and experience. Three of the groups worked in teams to build models from the Lego Science and Engineering kits. These Builders worked on solid construction, choosing the right pieces, and correcting mistakes that may have occurred. The 4^th group started designing a robot using the Lego NXT kit. They will be constructing and programming a candy-delivering robot for Halloween. Before the end of the meeting, each group had a chance to demonstrate and talk about their model. You can see a video of all the groups:

• Towards the end, you might hear me repeatedly calling Carson "Carter," while he and Carter correct me. I apologize to Carson! I seem to have this problem with his name--that I can look right at him, knowing what his name is, and the wrong one comes out of my mouth. He always politely corrects me.

First Meeting

Wow! 21 Builders attended our first meeting of the year! It was a great turnout and very exciting for me to see all of the new faces.

We began with a Lego Scavenger hunt, to become familiar with the different pieces. Many of the new Builders hadn't used Technic pieces before and returning Builders didn't know standard names for everything, so it was a challenge for most of them. Most of them worked together to find the items on the list. For the ones that got really stuck, I had flashcards that they could look at.

Resources:

• Scavenger Hunt List
• Flash Cards
  

Next, the Builders built their names out of Legos:

Look at all of the creative ways of building letters and using pieces! I'm going to print the pictures I took of all the names. We'll use them for name tags and photo tags for models later on.

You can't stop Builders from building, especially when the table in front of them is full of Legos. Here are some of the creations they came up with during our meeting:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Evan and Gordon finished early and shot some video of the other builders. Here's a scan around the room of everyone building:


Head to Flickr to see what some of the group did with their creations.

And finally, a special THANK YOU to Evan B., who donated the money he received as an award this summer to the group!

The next meeting is on Sept. 22. We'll split into groups and start working on models.