Merry Christmas Conyngham!

The code crackers had a blast representing FLL in the town's Christmas parade.

Thank you for letting us join in and sharing in the fun.

Are We Dreaming?

We recently won a lifetime opportunity to represent our area (and country) at at the First Lego League International Open Championship in Bath, England!

We are very excited to receive this chance of a lifetime opportunity and anticipate our trip will cost about $15,000, which includes our team's tournament registration, airfare and ground transportation, hotel lodging, meals, event insurance, and additional competition expenses.

We are super excited to now be representing our area and competing on an international level!  Can you please help us make our dream trip a reality?  Our local team is so honored to be representing such a great community and country.

 https://www.gofundme.com/fll-championship-team-ccc

 The FLL Open Championship event aims to:

■ Inspire young people and the general public to engage with STEM subjects and activities.
■ Encourage international collaboration and networking.
■ Promote awareness of engineering and encourage more young people to consider careers in STEM.
■ Provide teams from around the world with the opportunity to have fun, engage in a challenging competition and develop a range of key life skills

Your Donation Means the World to Us:

We are trying to bring STEM activities to our area. Your donation to our club would help us offer other events for the community. We would love to offer robotic and engineering workshops for other children. As the program and interest grows in the area, we want to help offer this opportunity to every child that wants to learn how to program! We are a very small community group. Without your help we will not be able to participate in the championship or continue to build this program in our area. We recently created two robotics groups out the Hazleton Area because the interest in FLL is growing. Next year we hope to start incorporating more students who are ready to learn and participate in robotics.

Thank you for your support in robotics and for us kids, who dream big,

The Conyngham Code Crackers: Jacob, Noah, Nick, Sammy, Ethan, Billy, and Sophie

Getting Closer!

http://nmfll.org/…/STOW-or-GO_Updated_Building_Instructions…

At last night's meeting, we discussed all the amazing things you witnessed at the tune up event! Great job kids. I am linking to a PDF, to creating a foam travel board. What a great idea!
Our goals the next few weeks will be to memorize our scripts! Work on a brand new run (milk, dog trainer, seal)... and possible food mission.

 We will also practice robot design and programming answers.

Christmas Parade is on the 10th! 🤖

The Tune Up Event

Coach Vicky had to be away for the FLL Tune Up event this year, as she was participating in her best friend's wedding.  However the  Conyngham Code Crackers did an amazing job! What a great event, and good way to warm up for the Reading Penn State Event this January.

Thanks to Uncle Jamie, Coach Keith, Coach Sue, and everyone else who helped the kiddos succeed.  

God Save the Bees!

One of the best things about FLL, is that it asks you help out the community in a special way with the project portion. This year Animal Allies asked us to pick an animal, and identify a problem we could solve with the way humans interact with the animal. As a group we decided to research the mason bee, after a few weeks of studying other animals.

Once we picked the bee, we knew we needed to come up with a solution to help aid them in our own community. We know that our families and neighbors care about their gardens, and keep well manicured lawns. The problem is that we often kill the food supply and homes of the mason bee! So we decided to build special Bee Sanctuaries to help aid our friends.  We also developed special seed bombs.

With aid from Coach Sue, she taught us how to mold and create seed bombs. Our seed bombs are pretty special. They are especially designed to help our local mason bee.  They use special manure,  clay, and seeds for our friends. Ethan specially molded and help with this project.

 

Mr. Mazzie, helped us with our Bee Houses. Noah came up a bee house design, and logo for on top. We each took turns drilling all the holes in the houses.  His lawn sign is spot on!

Finally we have been working on our presentation. Mrs. Mazzie helped us come up with our beautiful costumes. Isn't Sophie just the sweetest flower? Jake will get to play this role too. We think Pink is also his color!

 
 We created some other props, with the help of Coach Sue.  We think Nick makes the perfect little mason bee, and Sammy and Billy are strong narrators. We can't wait to share with you our skit.

We Fixed it!

In FLL there is always room for redesign! We saw that our robot needed that when she wasn't easily going over some of the game board. The problem was that the ball socket was getting hooked on the gate piece, as Myrtle plowed over it. So we took our design back to the drawing board.
 
We created a special back end design for Myrtle and it seems to allow her to easily travel over the gate.  We talked with mentor from Penn FLL, who gave us the idea that we needed to support the ball socket with braces.  (Thanks so much coach Jim!)

Jake, Sophie, and Sammy came up with a quick design. Sure enough it was all we needed.   In the future, we might come up with a smoother design that incorporates other wheels. We just are running on limited lego parts and supplies.   All in good time.  For now, we are happy to improvise with what we got.

We love it when a plan comes together!

"Loyals"

The Conyngham Code Crackers, Team #23551

Style of Lorde "Royals"

"Loyal"
I never seen a robot in distress
We couldn’t fix or adjust with coding
While I’m proud of our success
In a meet, there’s no show boating

But every robot has Legos, axles, motors, a line read, sensors, gyros, multiple USBs.

We do care, we love programming in our dreams.

But every meets like, core values, team work, fixing our last run, 2 minutes, project, having too much fun.. We do care.. We love  hard and software

And we’ll always be loyal, loyal… FLL is in  our blood
This kind of game is just for us
We crave a motors humming buzz..
FLL is just cooler (cooler)
You can join our team
And we can rule in
First Lego League

My friends and I we cracked the code
We count our Legos on the board and party
And everyone who knows us knows
We’re engineers and our robot’s hardy

But every robot has Legos, axles, motors, a line read, sensors, gyros, multiple USBs.

We do care, we love programming in our dreams.

But every meets like, core values, team work, fixing our last run, 2 minutes, project, having too much fun.. We do care.. We love  hard and soft ware

And we’ll always be loyal, loyal… FLL is in  our blood
This kind of game is just for us
We crave a motors humming buzz..
FLL is just cooler (cooler)
You can join our team
And we can rule in
First Lego League

All Our Friends Can Program, Can't you tell?

The Conyngham Code Crackers, FLL Team, parody of Twenty One Pilots' song "Heathens".

All my friends can program can’t you tell?
Coding our robot to stop and go!
Please don’t code any broken loops..
Our robot can’t handle the abuse

All my friends can program can’t you tell?
Coding our robot to stop and go!
Please don’t code any broken loops..
Our robot can’t handle the abuse

Welcome to first Lego league-who-have-rooms-of-kids-that-could-code one day
Program away
Just because we left the Legos on the floor doesn’t mean our bot will fail, our build’s not frail

You’re learning how to build, something new
You’re learning how to solve, something cool
You’ll work as a team to form a crew
But after all we’ve said, please don’t forget!

All my friends can program can’t you tell?
Coding our robot to stop and go!
Please don’t code any broken loops..
Our robot can’t handle the abuse

We deal with core-values very well
With teamwork, we always excel

You’re loving the coder, sitting next to you
You’ll have some coaches, helping you
You’ll have some parents cheering you
But after all we’ve said, please don't forget
————
All my friends can program can’t you tell?
Coding our robot to stop and go!
Please don’t code any broken loops..
Our robot can’t handle the abuse

All my friends can program can’t you tell?
(Code it)
Coding our robot to stop and go!
(Code it)
All my friends can program can’t you tell
(Code it)
Coding our robot to stop and go.

Glad you came, we knew you should have stayed
We tried to warn you Legos should be played
And now our team should discuss
It looks like you might code with us

First Video Competition!

The Conyngham Code Crackers decided to enter this year's first video competition!

The kids voted on a few songs, and decided to change the words to "Heathens" by twenty one pilots, and "Royals" by Lorde.

The past two weeks,  we took some time to record our music videos!  We worked together to record, use a green screen, and just have some fun with legos! We can't wait to show you what we have created.

Shark!!

Core Value Game: Sharks and Islands (focus on leave no man behind)
The game starts off with  ten paper islands. Kids swim around islands. When coach yells "Shark", the team members must find an island to stand on. Every time an island is removed. Unlike musical chairs, we leave no man behind, every team member must find an island to stand on. At the end of the game, every team member has to figure out how to stand on one island. 


 ---------------------------------------
After our group core values activity.  We decided to split into two groups to accomplish as much as we could.


Robot Game Team: This team (Jake, Sophie, Sammy Ethan) worked on  board setup, and focused on  programing the robot to move shark tank. We also tried to program the robot to go over tracks and return to base.  The kids found a design flaw with the Myrtle's back end! How can we get her to go smoothly over the dog line? She seems to be getting stuck...

 Project Team: (Noah, Billy, Nick) read bee book, design bee logos, return books to library. Noah came up with a really nice Bee Logo. The kids also found and read an article on endangered bees, and a Penn State article on the bees of Pennsylvania. The group is leaning to rescuing the Mason Bee! As it is one of Pennsylvania's top pollinator. The Mason Bee is losing its habitat because of human's development of land and destroying their homes. So how can we help the Mason Bee,  code crackers?

Tonight We Built!

All our lego parts came in! So we came up with a special design. Following builder dude's advice, we used large wheels (lego motorcycle wheels, and a small ball wheel in the back of our robot). We wanted our robot to reflect the animal allies theme, so we started building a strong and steady turtle. We added things to her shell. We decide we wanted to have the arms to cradle things and catch falling objects. We also wanted to add other gears.

 

This is what we came up with!  Meet Myrtle the Robot Turtle.

  

We voted on keeping a face, but Coach Vicky has to order us one that is legal in First Lego League.  We want to learn how to use ultrasonic, so Myrtle will be like a bat using echolocation or a dolphin using sonar. We'll keep adding and adjusting Myrtle as we aim to conquer that game board.


We are so excited for this season!!!

Meanwhile in Robotics.....

We are waiting for some robot parts to come in from Lego.com.. so tonight we decided to focus on the project.

 Core Values:
First we played a few animal games for our team building activity
(animal mixer, and let's go to the zoo).

 Animal Call Games:  Players make groups of 4-5 persons. Every player gets a paper with the name of an animal. Each group has the same animal. The players spread out in the room and then the light are turned off. Using only the sound of the animals (no talking!), the players must find their respective groups. The winner is the group who is the fastest group to be complete.

 Let's Go the Zoo:  This is a rhythm  circle game. Directions can be found on here!


Project Research
 ------------------------------------
After watching the project video, we learned that we need to first pick an animal(any animal in the animal kingdom including mammals, fish, or insects). Next we needed to discuss how humans interact with the animal and pick a problem with that interaction. Finally we need to create a solution for that problem.

So as a team, we brained stormed a big list of animals and insects including Eagles, butterflies, Giraffes(for Noah), horses, arctic foxes, scorpion fly, Tigers, lady bugs, honey bees, and white tail deer! The boys narrowed it down to Deer and bees.

When humans inhabit areas with white tail deer sometimes our vehicles hit them. Is there a way we can invent something to avoid car accidents?
Our honey bees are disappearing from the planet and humans might be causing this by creating pesticides and eliminating the honey bees habitat? Is there a way we can better educate people and save the honey bee?

We broke into two teams and started researching at the library. Our librarian was very helpful! We found out that deer use there sense of smell to sense danger. We decided that it be hard to put this on a car to warn deer as a car travels to fast for a deer to smell it? Maybe? 🚗

 We found out some cool things on honey bees, but no one knows for sure why the bees are disappearing.. We found out many ways people are researching this and humans do cause some disturbances for the bees. 🐝
 
The code crackers started brain storming some great ideas. Maybe we  could start a campaign for building honey bee gardens? How can we teach people to avoid putting chemicals on our lawn, We need to keep dandelions in the spring...



We will vote next week when all members are back on a final animal and problem!!
We will hopefully also have all our parts in to build and program our robot

Nice job kiddos!

Great job tonight code crackers! You programmed Billy to complete his tasks, discussed robot design, and learned more about the point values of some of the challenges. 😜

 

Here are the URLs to the videos we watched tonight:

Builder dude:
https://youtu.be/N5fzepIrFw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch…

Points value:
https://www.youtube.com/watch…



Core Values Game:
Robot Games: We set up five green bins on the floor. We put items in some bins. One volunteer chooses to be the robot. The robot is blind folded and can only move when given a command.

The rest of the team are programmers. They are only allowed to give the robot one command at a time. The programmers sit in a row. Each programmer gives a command and the robot follows exactly. If a programmer makes a mistake, he/she can not fix it. It is the next programmers job to get the robot to do the task. The team tries to get their robot to complete the task in the least amount of moves.


Sample Tasks: 
Retrieve the rubber duck from bin one and put it in bin four.
Take the banana from big 3 and bring it back to programmer one.
Take everything from bin two and place in bin five.

Sample Commands:
Turn to your right
Take five steps forward
Reach into the bin
Retrieve the banana
Turn to your left
Turn 180 degrees

The kids had fun programming and taking turns being the robot.

Our First Meeting

Happy second day of School Code Crackers! Coach Vince finished the board just in time for our first meeting. Coach Vicky had a hard time fitting it in her van, so she had to call her father in law to help! The Conyngham Borough Building is so gracious to let us use the meeting room and store our game board there. We are so excited to be housed there this year. We wish our friends the brushbots, from the Hazleton Institute of Robotics, continued success and a happy season.


  Vince use these directions to build the board for us. We will paint the sides at a later meeting!

The Animal Allies Season is going to be an exciting one. https://youtu.be/1TXqc_16vkE

 

 

 

All  Animal Allies resources for this year's challenge can be found on the following website:

 http://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/fll/animal-allies-challenge-updates-and-resources

Recap of the Meeting: We played a no talking core value's game! Watched the Animal Allies Resources Videos, Set up our game mat, and discussed ideas for our robot build.

Next week we will start designing our baby ;)

Lego Build Party Two!

Oh what a happy build day! It's great to seem the team working so hard. The rest of our team was able to quickly put together sets 6-10.

We started our day off right with some apple butter waffles. Build sets, takes time, and full bellies. Baby Penn loved seeing his new friends.


Our game pieces are ready! We just need to see what the official challenge is.

Coach Vince will be building our new gameboard this weekend.

Lego Build Party One!

Animal Allies 2016- We built half of our game pieces this afternoon and are amazed at how cute and exciting this theme is turning out to be. Pandas, a pig, a flamingo, a bat, a K-9 unit.. Just to name a few of the things we built today. 🐼🐷🐸

 The team of three share some pizza, and good laughs as they started building our animal allies set. We can wait to see what missions we will have.


We left the big sets for next week when we can hopefully meet up with our other team members so they get a chance to play ☺️ (maybe over waffles?)

 First official meeting Wed August 31st at six at the community room in the borough building. Objective: learn what the missions are, and project for this year and come up with a simple robot design. Short meeting, so kids can acclimate to the new school year schedule 😀

 Enjoy the last week of summer!

The Animal Allies game board arrived in the mail today! And the board looks so promising.. From farmland, to sea, and a panda bear.. This year's mission is going to be great fun!!

We have Legos to put together!!! Let's pick a weekday the boys can get together to start building.

We won't know our mission or project until August 30th... But we can build parts, and come up with a robot design before then!!