Volunteering at the middle school

For the fourth year in a row, a few members of our team have volunteered at a weekly after school robotics academy at Lake Highland Prep for fourth through sixth graders. The students use LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kits to build and program their own robots to complete challenges. Our volunteers help the students design and build their robots and teach them basic drag and drop programming. They also help designing and building challenges for the students, pulling from their memories of FLL challenges. At the end of the academy, there is a fun ‘Sumo Bots’ competition that all of the kids look forward to. We choose to volunteer at this academy because it helps our school community and inspires a love for robotics in the next generation of young engineers. In addition to this, we know that sustainability is an important part of maintaining a successful team, so we hope that the kids will go on to join a local FLL team or end up joining HazMat in the future. All of our team members who volunteer at this academy have a great time mentoring and interacting with the young students, and we hope to continue this tradition for years to come. This experience inspired us to create our own FLL team.