Going to State!

Hi all!

Today was a super exciting day for Case!  All day today, his elementary school Lego League team competed in their regional competition.  They competed against other elementary schools, middle schools, private Christian schools, and even a group of homeschoolers. 

As you may have read in my post last week, Case and his team (the Mr. Nicer Nisins) have been working for about 3-4 months on their project and the accompanying robotic challenge where you use legos to build the obstacles etc.  In fact, he has stayed after school until at least 5pm every night for the past two weeks working on this.  Well, it obviously paid off because they came in FIRST PLACE today in the project presentation and scored very high on both the core values and the robotic challenge. 

Here is a great picture one of our parents got at their moment of victory in a robotic heat (Case is the one with both hands raised on the right)!

Holy cow, we could not be more proud of this team and especially of our little man's contributions!  It was his research and understanding of the composition of a fairly complex biochemical bacteriocide (for 4th grade!) and its actions and use that helped them beat everyone!  The look of pure pride, absolute joy, and total accomplishment was the best!

The challenge this year is called Food Factor, and focuses on our food chain and how to get food safely from "field to fork".  Teams have to choose some aspect that is problematic, research it, and then come up with a viable solution and again research to back up their ideas.  It's a theoretical application, but they learn so much.  This fall, after the cantaloupe scare and Listeria outbreak in Colorado, they decided to look at how they could make this fruit- its crop, harvest, and storage- safer.  The idea they developed is so cool, utilizes an naturally occurring, organic compound that has been proven safe for humans, and is totally cost effective.  I won't go into it, but suffice to say, its a great concept and the judges were blown away today!  They were awarded first place and that vaulted them on to the State competition in Columbia, SC!  We are thrilled for him and grateful he has these types of experiences at his elementary school.  The downside is, I'll probably never eat cantaloupe again, but that's ok  :)

Here are the Mr. Nicer Nisins (complete with their cool hats, beads, and buttons they made and traded with other teams):

Until next time,
-L  :)


PS:
I posted videos in the last post about what FIRST is, of which Lego League is the first step.  If you didn't watch them, please do- they are really interesting!  Its for boys AND girls (there was an all-girl team that moved on to State as well today) and I highly encourage you to get your kids involved if there you have a local team!