A local group of Scotts Bluff County 4-H kids interested in robotics made a big splash in the state’s FIRST LEGO League, with a second place finish at the 2024 Nebraska FLL contest in their rookie year.
Panhandle Cookie Bytes is a group of youngsters from communities throughout the county, coached by Cody and Natalie Creech.
During a recent potluck celebration, Natalie explained how the kids’ robotics skills combined with their Innovation Project, a community sewing lab at the Panhandle Extension Center, to achieve their impressive milestone. “The funnest part, usually, for the kids is the robot games on the robot board. And so they run that, they get three times to run it. They take the best score of the three runs, that placed them third in the state with a score of 365,” said Creech. “Then they have a presentation on their innovation project and their robot design, and that is judged by two separate judges, and then there’s a core-values judge. Those are skills they get to work on throughout the season; discovery, community impact, teamwork.”
The kids evaluated their hobbies and made spidergraphs to weigh their options for the innovation project, which this year had a theme of engaging the community in a hobby. Team member Sneha Maharjan explained how sewing came to be their choice, saying “First of all, we were just thinking of making sewing and promoting it in our community. And then we saw that it would be better to make a sewing lab so that everybody could come. It is not very cheap to get sewing as a hobby”out the options, and sewing came out on top.”
The robotics portion of their efforts also involved a lot of work with better coders teaming up with others who had less experience. Natalie asked the kids about how long they worked on coding their robot, and Beau Knapper replied “We started at like the third or fourth practice, (and continued) for about five months. Natalie continued ‘And we coded clear until what?” to which Beau said “until the last second.”
The sewing lab has already had an impact on the community, with more than 60 people stopping by to see the project, and more than 30 putting it to use. The group has also collected pillowcases and blankets, which are being donated to local charities.
After the state contest that had more than 70 teams, the kids are now setting their sights on the Florida Sunshine Invitational, an international FLL competition that takes place this coming June. Natalie explained how, in the meantime, the kids will be refining both their innovation project and their robotics coding.
“They’ll continue to promote their project, and invite people from the community to schedule and use this space. Youth groups are welcome, (and) I know the Homemaker’s Club has considered coming up and using it. But (they’ll) continue to take donations and how people use this space they’ve created here. And they’ll continue to iterate on their robot; they’re going to want to make their robot better, stronger and consistent, they may change some of the attachments, because that’s part of the process, the engineering process.”
One other activity is also on tap for the kids and their parents; fundraising to help with expenses when they head to the Sunshine State in just under two months.
