Botcats Robotics Club

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Our last robotics meeting allowed kids to complete "the hour of code" activities! They were so into it! Check out activities to keep your kids prepared for the future, where coding will be a highly-demanded, if not required career skill! www.code.org/learn

Busy busy botcats. Today's topic: color sensors!

We will still have practice tomorrow, but we will get out 15min early. That means 3:30-4:45. Come with water bottles, bots charged and ready to go!

We started up robotics again...this time pulling in more kids from Caden's age group. Three new Botcats built and programmed their very first robot today! A warm welcome to our new Botcat members: Jacob, Antony, Gisela, Vicki and Cyrus!

Botkittens represent!

The Botcats are presenting their project!!! !

We see blue! The Botcats are earning their first points in the Core Values and Robot Design session!

Tomorrow is the grand finale! Here is the Botcat's program they wrote to accomplish their missions. As you can see they're no longer botkittens!!! ;)

Today the Botcats did their pre-competition mission run and presentation for residents with Alzheimer's and dimensia at our local nursing home.

10 hr marathon last Saturday--Robots, project poster board and making their dinner!!! We're almost there. :)

THIS JUST IN! THE BOTCATS' TRASH TREK PROJECT IMPACT LED TO A REDUCTION IN THE NUMBER OF PLASTIC BAGGIES IN THEIR 5th GRADE CLASS BY MORE THAN ONE HALF!!! Way to go Botcats! We're super proud of you!

1.5 weeks left until the competition!!! The Botcats did an AWESOME job yesterday. The project presentation board looks spectacular (a special thanks to Noelia for cutting all the letters and graphics!) The missions are now in the stage of joining all attachments with one single robot. Exciting stuff.

Next week Wednesday at 5:30pm, the Botcats will be presenting their missions and project to residents of Brookdale Senior Living: Address: 6735 W Hillcrest Blvd, Glendale, AZ 85310

We are really looking forward to the Botcats showing off their hard work!

Looking further ahead, Monday, November 30th at 6:00pm will be our end-of-season Awards Ceremony at Streets of New York: 6740 W Deer Valley Rd, Glendale, AZ 85310. Separate family check arrangements have been made.

Update: The Botcats will be running a practice presentation for residents at our local alzheimer and dimensia center before their competition! More details next week!

Botcats keep working! We have two more weeks to go before the competition! The project data is coming together and missions are being solved!

Photo: Botcats move their mission table to set up for practice.

Check out this food waste solution, Botcats: http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/food-waste-is-a-massive-problem-heres-how-to-fix-it/

Food Waste Is a Massive Problem. Here's How to Fix It. A new film highlights the food waste problem. Here are some things we can do to fix it.

Make sure Botcats wear their team shirts to school tomorrow. Best of luck to all the kids in their first in-class project presentation!

Today Botcats begin their Trash Trek research project. A special thank you to the awesome 5th grade teacher team for their support in this! Botcats will be counting lunch trash items today through Thursday, presenting their project on Friday and doing a lunch trash recount next week to see if their talk made a difference! : ) The cool posters they made will be put on display in the 5th grade hall this coming Friday.

Parents have received an email with all the detailed information regarding this adventure. Students received a step-by-step packet today in school with information about their activities for the next couple of days. PARENTS: PLEASE REVIEW TALKING POINTS WITH YOUR KIDS TO HELP THEM PREPARE FOR THEIR PRESENTATION ON FRIDAY!!!

Best of wishes to the Botcats on their first research project!!!

The Botcats have received permission from Ms. Landis to run their project as follows:

Oct 27 28 29 Botcats count snack/ sandwich baggies in class.
Oct 30 Botcats present their idea to get students to use recycle able containers (or re-use their baggies).
Nov 3 4 5 kids recount snack baggies to see if their talk made a difference.

We can start collecting Capri Sun juice pouches from 5th graders all next week, if that works for you and the other 5th graders. I'll set up an after school collection schedule for our kids.

The Botcats will be making snack bags out of the upcycled juice containers for their classmates.

Excellent posters to promote your project, Botcats!

The Botcats presented their Trash Trek proposal to their school's principal yesterday! We are so proud of their professionalism, vision and clarity!!!

Are you doing your part for the environment? Arizona cities divert far less trash from landfills and into recycling than the U.S. average of 35 percent.

http://www.azcentral.com/picture-gallery/news/local/chandler/2015/09/17/what-you-can-cant-recycle/72366834/

What you can, can't recycle Plastic grocery bag: No. These can cause problems at materials-sorting facilities and have to be removed from the conveyer to prevent jamming. The best way to recycle these is at drop-off sites located in many grocery stores. Most plastic film wraps (like the kind that wrap a case of bottled water)…

Botcats will present their Trash Trek problem and potential solutions to their principal today:
Students want to take on the challenge of transforming the way Copper Creek Students deal with their trash at lunch by:
1) Requesting permission to label bins for recyclable materials (currently items are not recycled at lunch!!!)
2) Collecting Capri Sun juice bags to repurpose them into lunch bags
3) Establishing a compost program for local gardens
4) Educating the Copper Creek Community about how their choices impact on the environment.

Reminder: Botcats have practice this Saturday from 10am to noon! We will be taking our team picture, so please remember to wear your Botcat tshirts!

Jr. Botcat, Caden, "not polluting the earth" by installing our compost container. Contact your city's sanitation department and get one to enrich your garden. Glendale residents can get a free compost bin (re-purposed, discontinued garbage bin) by calling the city's sanitation department. Many other city's have the same program, or provide compost bins for a small fee. Thank you, Noelia, for letting us know about this!

Practice #4:
Botcats continued on refining their robot tasks and decided on their Trash problem project:
Problem: sandwich and snack bags in lunches are making LOTS of trash. Today the Botcats calculated that students in public schools across the USA throw away well over 14 billion snack/sandwich bags a year.
Solution/Share: Botcats will educate students at their school about this problem to create awareness about individual trash production and the positive impact of reusable lunch containers...stay tuned, as this will most certainly get fun and messy!

Reminder: Meeting at 8:45am in Tempe for Kick-off on Saturday! Wear your shirts! We will take advantage of being there early to explore the expo a bit...so please be on time. :)

The FLL Robotics Kick-off program has finally been released!http://outreach.engineering.asu.edu/azfll/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/07/2015-FIRST-Expo-Kickoff-Program.pdf

outreach.engineering.asu.edu

The Trash Trek Project problem will be decided today. Here is one problem. Can you guess where we are going with this? Think about bag lunches at school...

Remember, Botcats, our make-up session for yesterday will be this Thursday after school! See you there!