“I’ve done it before and knew these kids would be needing help,” said Josh, 17. He is a member of marching band and Science Olympiad team, and participated in FLL a few years ago. “It’s like going back to my childhood.”
Joseph watched Josh navigate a robot thought a Lego obstacle course.
“You see it as a challenge, but I see it as overwhelming,” Joseph said. “It is hard to find people who know how to program the Mindstorm XT. And Josh and Kristin are so good with the kids.”
Kristin, 18, was closely shadowed by six Normandy students as she moved among a computer, containers of Lego blocks and the hallway where the group tested a robot. Normandy’s FLL team was so intent on their high school mentors that Joseph had to nudge the kids out the door at the end of the practice session.
Fourth-graders Christian Berg, Imani Coleman, Nailah Ghouse, Joshua Giambattista, Aneesh Kathula, Michelle Mercuri and Nikita Sandella and fifth-graders Claire Anderson, Matthew Ehring and Andrew Mattingly meet one to three times a week to design and build the Lego robots.
As the Dec. 5 competition at the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery gets closer, the team will meet more frequently.
The Normandy FIRST Lego League challenge involves more than designing and building a robot.
The team also is expected to devise a solution to a transportation problem. The Normandy kids have chosen to look at the efficiency and safety of school buses.
“I like being creative,” fifth-grader Claire Anderson, 10, said. “I like coming up with ideas for our robot and programming it.”
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