GirlBots in Action

Drop into any Junior robotics team meeting these days and you are likely to see lots of hair—heads bent over Lego pieces and hands busy building power plants, moving cars, and guinea pigs. Lego guinea pigs? Yep! Guinea pigs are an energy-consuming device (of sorts) and the Junior teams have been challenged with the task of building a Lego model that demonstrates energy consumption and generation.

By the time they are finished in December, the Kindergarten-2nd graders will have

• completed an energy audit
• researched and modeled sources of energy
• experimented with the six types of simple machines
• built a motorized Lego model
• designed a poster illustrating their results, and
• participated in a city-wide "Show and Tell" celebration where they will answer questions in front of 200 other children, parents, and adult reviewers.

Whew! That is a lot to accomplish in one semester. Excited squeals, puzzled frustration followed by "aha" moments, contagious laughter, and continuously learning how to work together as a team all describe the journey these youngest GSA GirlBots have made since September. We are very proud of them!

OTHER GIRLBOT NEWS:

3M Presentation: GSA’s older robotics teams, the Flaming Robots (3-5th grade) and Run-It Silver (6th-8th grade) have been invited by 3M to participate in a 10 team pre-tournament presentation on November 28th. The teams will be talking with 3M scientists, demonstrating their robots, and answering questions about their energy research.

KVUE will be filming our 6-8th grade robotics team, showcasing them and two other teams as they prepare for and compete in the city-wide First Lego League tournament on December 9th. You may get an opportunity to see our older robotics girls on KVUE up to three different times!