W.A.F.F.L.E.S.

A VEXing day

B. — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:04:02 +0000

Today we were working on our robot design and getting some components of our robot design ready and getting some of the key features working. We will have to work hard for our first competition in late November and it will take some time to get all things in working order. We have already had our robot up and moving and now we are trying to get the intake working.

National FIRST Day!

B. — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:58:52 +0000

Today the W.A.F.F.L.E.S. were showing their FIRST spirit by wearing their T-shirts while working on a design to complete the rat mission on the field table. They have been working hard on refining their base robot for this year’s FLL challenge. Our new member to our team seems to be fitting right in, learning about building, programming, research, and of course the core values. During today’s meeting I refreshed my memory of NXT-G from 5 years ago when we used it our rookie year as we are now moving towards programming in NXT-G because it is simpler to understand and use and has many accuracy advantages. I gave a quick lesson on some of the more complex applications for programs, building on their previous experience, allowing them to start thinking about other blocks to create a program that can be more accurate in their runs on the field table.

It really is quite impressive what they can understand already, and how quickly they picked up on new programming concepts, and I look forward to teaching them more about the things that they can use in NXT-G to help them accomplish whatever their goal may be.

Yogurt

P.S. Getting exited for year 2 of mentoring.

Pizza and Ice Cream

Cinnamon — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:13:54 +0000

At our meeting today, we began our research on food contamination and spoiling and have started setting up a few field trips to kick off the new season, Food Factor!

To celebrate the beginning of a new year of fun and learning, we decided to have a pizza and ice cream party with the Mini W.A.F.F.L.E.S. (a lunch menu inspired by our field table elements). Everyone really enjoyed it…. especially the ice cream part!

We’re all looking forward to our next meeting!

The W.A.F.F.L.E.S. on Halloween

Honey — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:33:21 +0000

Our Halloween Costumes

The Waffles Pumpkin

Yesterday we got together to work on our robot and our research presentation. We figured out one problem with our robot and did some programming. We still have lots of work to do, but we are getting there. When we were done we all got dressed in our Halloween costumes for a group picture with the “Waffles Pumpkin” my little sister designed. Every year when we go trick or treating our neighbours always ask us how our robotics team is doing. Wearing our costumes gives us a chance to tell them about our project and invite them to our annual Open House.

Here’s a picture of me with my brothers and sisters. My oldest brother is our FLL Junior Mentor. My youngest sister is on our Mini W.A.F.F.L.E.S (Jr. FLL) team.

Visiting the Big Robots

C. — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:24:33 +0000

Today our coach brought some of us to visit our local FRC team. She does this pretty regularly and we always have fun when we get to go. Today I got to help with the prototyping they were doing. I think it worked pretty good. The best part is I got my picture put on on the K-botics blog

“Maple Syrup”

***A note from Coach C: If you have a chance I encourage you to bring your FLL team out to see what some of the FRC teams are doing. It’s great for the kids to get to see what the next step is and often it can inspire them with their own robot designs. It’s extremely worthwhile to organize a field trip to an FRC event too. I’m sure if you contacted any of the FRC teams they would love to have you join their cheering section for the day and take you on a guided tour of the pit area.

The W.A.F.F.L.E.S. at university

Honey — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:55:00 +0000

On Friday our parents let us take the day off school so we could go the the University of Ottawa. We had to get up really early, but it was a lot of fun to be able to share our passion for FIRST with about 40 teacher’s college students. Last year our coach did most of the talking, but this year she insisted we stretch ourselves a little bit more and practice our presentation skills. We started off showing a power point presentation we made about FIRST, and more specifically about FIRST LEGO League. We all spoke about a different part of the program. After that we explained this year’s challenge to them and showed them what we have been busy working on since the challenge release. They seemed to really enjoy watching our research presentation, laughing in all the right spots. After we were done it was there turn to give things a try. The group was divided into teams and we had the chance to pretend to be coaches. Each team got to build and program their own robots. They all came up with fun team names and a few even managed to make up a team cheer and take part in a little research. After we got to enjoy some pizza as a special treat.

Mini but Mighty

C. — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:55:24 +0000

Last week our Mini W.A.F.F.L.E.S., or Junior FIRST LEGO League team, got started on their challenge. I have to say they really, really impressed me! They worked so well together and I can’t believe how much they were able to accomplish in one short meeting. At this rate they will have things pretty well wrapped up in the next week.

They started off with an awesome brainstorming session and after a reasonable amount of consideration decided on their area of focus. I tribute this largely to the fact that they have been watching their older brothers and sisters on the W.A.F.F.L.E.S. team and have already had the opportunity of doing a bit of background research. They may be small (ages 6-9), but the Mini W.A.F.F.L.E.S. are mighty. I look forward to seeing them grow and spread their wings as they explore all the wonderful opportunities FIRST has to offer.

If there are any other FLL teams out there that have younger brothers and sisters, I encourage you to start up a Jr. FLL team for them. It’s really easy to have the younger kids work in one corner while the older kids work on their FLL challenge. They can easily be supervised by any adult (no experience required!) and the FLL kids can share their experiences with the younger ones as jr. mentors.

Coach C.

May the Waffle Force be with you!

C. — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 17:37:44 +0000

On Saturday we had our awesome Movie Night, complete with pizza and costumes. We all had fun! Can you guess what movie we watched?

We did some work too. We were designing a way to deliver the pace maker and the cardiac patch. For our research project we talked about what makes a good science experiment and we came up with some ideas for an experiment we can do.

“Honey and Maple Syrup”

Field Trip

Honey — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:33:02 +0000

The W.A.F.F.L.E.S. love field trips! It’s always so much fun to get to go somewhere and learn cool things. Yesterday we did some exploring of the past. Our coach said she hopes it will give us an idea of how far things have come and help us really stretch our imaginations in thinking about how far things can go in the future. I think she is hoping the trip will help us think really big when we come up with our innovative solution for our research project. Oh ya, forgot to mention we brought the Mini W.A.F.F.L.E.S. on our field trip too. I think it was fun for them to see some of the tools doctors use close up. Hopefully they got some great ideas for their project too.

“Honey”

On the Ball

Honey — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:48:07 +0000

Yesterday was a good day for the W.A.F.F.L.E.S. Our coach mentioned a few times that she was impressed with our productivity. We were all really on the ball, working together really well. When “Cinnamon” arrived after school she was kept busy acting as team hostess, explaining the game and our robot design to some people who were visiting us for the first time. The rest of us were busy working on duplicating our finalized chassis so that “Caramel” could take it home to experiment with. We were really working well together and it was really fun. I was particularly impressed with our newest team members. I don’t think strangers walking into the room would have been able to tell our experienced team members from our rookies. We also took some time out to re-read the Research Presentation rubric and brainstorm a few ideas for how we want to lay out our presentation. I can hardly wait for Saturday….it is going to be so much fun to do that part of our research When we were finishing up we took a bit of time out to shoot a few hoops in the driveway. It was a lot of fun too. What a great day!

“Honey”