Our journey to the state championships started before the regional competition and even the school year. The McLean FLL team attended a FLL summer camp in Maryland to learn the basics of coding and the robot game since it this is the first year that all the kids are doing FLL. insert picture
Once the school year started we had bi-weekly practices to help with the robot game and innovation project, assisted by high school volunteers from Langley High School. FLL practice became a family ritual on Friday nights. Siblings and parents would come to support the team and just enjoy each others company. Friday practices were like hangouts with pizza breaks and game time, along with coding and robot game practice. Each family played their role in supporting the team by taking up tasks like mentoring,
Thursday practices were centered on the innovation project. The team started their research on the field of archeology to align with the Unearthed theme, by visiting the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Once they completed their initial research, the team was able to talk to Smithsonian paleoanthropologist Dr. Briana Pobiner. High school volunteer Prthika Lanka was able to set up a meeting with Dr. Pobiner where the team was able to guide their understanding by asking her insightful questions. Next the team went to the Alexandria Museum of Archeology to talk to Dr. Emma Richardson about the field of archeology. Using all the knowledge that they gained from Dr. Pobiner and Dr. Richardson, as well as the team's research, the team was ready to start brainstorming about topics for their innovation project. After much thought and deliberation, the team decided on tackling the issue of unearthing the mystery behind artifacts. The team researched various ways to solve this issue and were able to decide on building a prototype for an app to help archeologists identify artifacts. They added various features such as a chat box and database enabling the archeologists to store and share information with each other. To help present the project on competition day the team created skit to present the information to the judges. They practiced it during the Thursday practice, along with developing their poster board.
Finally on the regional competition day the team showed up ready to compete and have fun! Overall, the team was able to win the division 1 robot game portion and won the second place championship trophy, qualifying them for the state championships.