L is for Lego League

Normally when I blog, I try to write about something I'm very familiar with.  Today's L in Ben and Me's Alphabet Challenge is actually something I want to learn more about myself.  A few weeks ago, Schnickelfritz and I went on an adventure (code of field trip) to the FIRST Robotics Championships in St. Louis.  Although the glitz and glamor went to the 14-18 year olds building basketball shooting robots, there was a minor leagues version for up and coming programmers and engineers.  FIRST's  Lego League is a world wide competition for 9-14 year olds.

Each Annual Challenge is made of three parts: The Project, the Robot Game, and Core Values.  I'll share what I've discovered about the 2012 Challenge: Food Factor (each year has a new theme).

The Project

The students had to:

• Identify a problem associated with food safety.
• Research a solution that is either a new idea or improvement on something already being done.
• Create an innovative solution for safely harvesting, transporting, preparing, or storing certain foods.
• Share their solution with their community
• Make a 5 minute presentation before a panel of judges

Sounds like their logging some serious Language Arts hours to this home schooling mom!  Research skills, public speaking, perhaps marketing, graphic design etc.  I didn't get to see any presentations--I believe there all done behind closed doors so the kids don't have to deal with stage fright. 

The Robot Game

Each team has about 10 weeks to build and program a Lego Mindstorm robot that can navigate the playing field and perform tasks: drop off loads, pick other loads up, turn a dial, pull a wagon etc.  Each task has a point value based on difficulty and distance from the base corner.  I believe there are 300 points available in a 2 minute 30 second match.  Here's the kicker--the kids have to design, build, and program their robots themselves.  They have to learn about sensors and a programming language.  Coaches are encouraged to help students experiment to discover what works best but they're strictly hands off the robot.  All decisions are to be made by the kids.

Core Values

I couldn't say this better than they do themselves, so I'm copying this from the FIRST Lego League website.

The FLL Core Values are the cornerstones of the FLL program. They are among the fundamental elements that distinguish FLL from other programs of its kind. By embracing the Core Values, participants learn that friendly competition and mutual gain are not separate goals, and that helping one another is the foundation of teamwork.

We are a team.

We do the work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors.

We know our coaches and mentors don't have all the answers; we learn together.

We honor the spirit of friendly competition.

What we discover is more important than what we win.

We share our experiences with others.

We display Gracious Professionalism^® and Coopertition^® in everything we do.

We have FUN!

I'm attending an informational meeting to learn how to coach a Lego League team myself, so I hope this is this first of many FLL posts.  In the meantime I'll keep blogging through the alphabet.

5 Days of Freezer Cooking (Day 1)

  
Benjamin Franklin had it wrong.  Death and taxes aren’t the only certainties in life.  Any wife or mother will tell you the third certain thing is someone asking “What’s for supper?”   Everyone needs to eat, but how we go about preparing meals for our families can vary widely.  Do you throw open the cupboards at 4 pm and hope to be inspired?  Perhaps your the planning sort that pulls out the cookbook and the grocery inserts from the paper and chooses the meals for the week?  Do you like to cook or do you hate it?  This week I’d like to share with everyone the concept of freezer cooking.  Today I’ve got four good reasons why it can be a benefit to you. 

Freezer Cooking can save you money

  In these tough economic times, I’m pleased to announce that freezer cooking will save you money!  If you have a dinner you can pull out of the freezer that means you don’t have to order pizza in or head to the drive thru.  Have you checked the prices lately?   A pizza for a family of four runs $18-$20 (and that’s not counting the tip for the delivery man).  Last year I figured out the cost for ingredients for a home made pizza at under $1.27.  The remaining  cost is for the convenience of not cooking yourself (or perhaps the cost for not planning ahead).
Beyond the savings of home vs restaurant, you can take advantage of bulk purchases or store sales.  A can of crushed tomato sauce at my local Walmart is $.59   for  8 oz or  7.4 cents per ounce.   I can buy a #10 can (96 oz) of crushed tomatoes for  $2.79.    That works out to just under 3 cents per ounce--less than half the cost!!    When Thanksgiving rolls around and turkeys go on sale I buy the biggest one I can find.  What doesn’t get eaten at the feast is used in freezer meals that call for cooked, chopped chicken.  You can plan the same way with ground beef sales around the summer picnicking holidays. 

Freezer cooking can be a real time saver.

Mary Hunt gave the best analogy when I attended her freezer cooking lecture at the Indiana Association of Home Educators:  Imagine you needed to wash and iron a laundry basket full of shirts.  You don’t take one shirt, throw it in the washer, move it to the dryer, iron it, and then return to the basket to repeat the steps with the next shirt.  Half the work (or more) in cooking is the preparation and clean up.  If you make enough meatloaf to fill two pans, serve one, and freeze the other you’ve made two meals but only have to goush (that’s a culinary term for squish it in your hands) the meat and clean the bowl once.  Now imagine expanding your mega-cooking session to prepare a week’s worth of meals, or more.  Two of my favorite freezer cooking resources are Once a Month Cooking and 30 Day Gourmet.  Imagine the satisfaction of having a month’s worth of dinners in the freezer.  I feel like I’ve gained 4 extra hours to my day when I know in the morning the dinner’s already taken care of.   Even if I have some additional prep work before I pop dinner in the oven, I know I’m coming out ahead.  One of my favorite recipes is Big Batch Beef Sauce.  I make 7-8 meal servings at a time and store it in quart freezer bags.  When I thaw one I can use it as the base for several dishes: spaghetti, chili, taco salad, shepherds pie, etc.  Sometimes I think that even better than saving time is saving the hassle of trying to figure out what meal I can put on the table.

Freezer cooking can prepare you for a rainy day

We all have those days or weeks when freezer meals are the only way a home cooked meal can happen.  Maybe you’re in charge of VBS or the Easter pageant.  Maybe you’ve got a garden full of tomatoes that need to be picked and canned.  Or maybe you’re like me when my Schnickelfritz was born: I had a newborn baby, two weeks later I had surgery and my hand was immobilized and my husband had double knee surgery.  Yes, we did have friends bring over a few dinners when the baby arrived, but who ever thinks you might need help with breakfasts?  Fortunately I knew all these events were going to occur so in the prior month I was cooking and freezing up a storm.   Everyone was so amazed that I was able to host Thanksgiving dinner during that period.  We may have eaten on paper plates, but the meal itself went into the freezer when everyone else was thinking about carving their Halloween pumpkins. 

Freezer cooking can allow you to practice hospitality

Speaking of holiday meals or having babies, don’t you wish you had a meal you could just pull out the the freezer to share with a new mom, or a new neighbor, or to express your sympathy to a family suffering a loss?  Maybe instead of bringing it over piping hot, you could deliver a frozen meal with cooking instructions and then they can use it according to their needs (I know when Schnickelfritz was born we had plenty of leftovers in the fridge when another new meal was delivered).  Perhaps you could organize a freezer meal shower for a mom with lots of other kids that needs more free time than more baby clothes?  I’ve even heard of a group of church ladies that met regularly to be a blessing for a fellow church member with muscular dystrophy.   She supplied the grocery list and the money and they shopped and prepared the meals in individual serving portions for her to heat up.  Talk about being God’s hands and feet for someone in need!

So have I convinced you to give freezer cooking a try?  You’ll want to check back tomorrow when I share how to go about planning an assembly day.   In fact, why not use one of the means in the right column to follow Ozark Ramblings.  Until tomorrow you can check out one of the other Homeschool Crew's "5 Days of..."  topics by clicking below.

Review: Go Science

Our latest review products came from Library and Educational Services or LES--a company I often buy from.  They have great prices on radio theater Cd's, Bible studies, flannel board figures, and more.  In fact when I heard they were shipping me these two DVDs, I asked if I could add a few more purchases to the box.  The review items are two volumes from a series called GO Science.  Each DVD is about 40 minutes long and contains 9-12 demonstrations.

Do your kids like explosions?  Would you rather view them safely on the TV than try to set them up in your basement?  I was perfectly happy to let Ben Roy show what happens when you put a lit match under a balloon filled with hydrogen or cap a bottle filled with liquid nitrogen.  Other demonstrations were of a much tamer nature:  a study about buoyancy with two cans of root beer or seeing how many chicken eggs could fit inside an ostrich egg.

Did you know you can boil water over a flame in a paper cup?  What do you think happens to common objects in the frozen blackness of space?  The first half of this DVD covers experiments with water, the second half deals with outer space.  There's even the trick we've probably all tried--swinging a bucket of water over our head without spilling.

First, I have to say that my son loved these videos.  He felt like he was one of the students in the audience--going so far as to raise his hand hoping to get picked to answer a question.  Ben Roy's  bubbly enthusiasm for science (and kids) spills off the screen.   I love his tag line, "Every time we learn about science, we learn something about our Creator--God."   As an introduction to science, these videos are great when you're still trying to develop that sense of wonder and show that learning can be fun.  Mr. Roy also covers important safety issues like using safety glasses and never sniffing beakers of unidentified chemicals. 

As a teacher though, I don't think these videos go far to log as science for older kids (the recommended age range is 6-14).  These are really "demonstrations" not "experiments."  There is no hypothesis, and sometimes even no explanation for what we see.  In the case of the exploding bottle we're simply told that it contains a "dangerous gas" but we never learn what that gas is.  Similarly we don't learn what two chemicals are combined to create luminescence in the test tube. 

You might want to consider using these DVDs in Sunday School or VBS.  Each demonstration ends with a reference to how perfectly God created our world, or the dangers of sin, or how God can forgive our sins. It goes back to the tag line  "Every time we learn about science, we learn something about our Creator--God."  There is a feature to select chapters on the DVD so you could choose the demonstration that best firsts you Bible lesson.  If you show them for a class please note there are no captions available.  You can view a sample for yourself.

As I mentioned, these volumes are part of a series.  Other titles include Magnetism, Simple Machines, Flight and Motion.  LES offers these videos at a significant savings($8.97 vs $14.95) to qualified buyers (resellers, educators, librarians, home educators, as well as church leaders such as pastors or directors of children’s ministries.) 

Others on the Homeschool Crew viewed the other titles so you'll want to click here and see what they think.

Disclaimer: I received two free Go Science DVD's for the purpose of completing this review.  I received no other compensation for my honest opinions.

It's Coming ....Monday

A first for the Homeschool Crew Blog Cruise (and me).  For those who follow the Cruise, you know that we tackle answering a different question each week.  We all have the same question, but our answers can come from any number of directions.  Next week, we'll each be spending a WHOLE week blogging about topics that our near and dear to our hearts...that we have a passion to share with others.  I've seen the list and we're blogging about Adoption, Math, Living Books, Scouting, Homeschooling at Theme Parks and more.  My topic for the week---5 Days of Freezer Cooking.  Look for it Monday morning.

You must remember this....

Does the scene from Casablanca play in your head when you see those lyrics?    My memory (or lack thereof) was highlighted yesterday.  Schickelfritz and I went with his grandparents on a lovely drive through the country to an all you can eat fried chicken and pork steak dinner hosted by the VFW.  To amuse himself (at the old folks' expense) he pulled the highway atlas out and began playing "Name the capital."   Between the three of us we could usually come up with a correct answer (Carson City, Nevada stumped us all). We're in good company though, the NATO video promoting the upcoming summit stated Chicago was the capital of Illinois.  It was considerably easier when he said the city and we had to come up with the state.  Of course after 50 states and still some miles to go he turned to the Canadian Territories and Provinces.  "Foul!" I cried, "I never had to learn those in school."   My best guess was to add "City" to the end of whatever province he named (which only worked for Quebec).

We had a lot more laughs than correct answers--I can't tell you how bad it got when we switched to Mexico.  It reminded me of watching "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?"  I'm sure it was covered somewhere in my education, but those files have been pushed to the back of the cabinet in my mind  to make room for "Where are my car keys?" and "Have I paid all the bills this month?" Anything I really need to know I can look up--although what you see in print isn't always true either.  The Route 66 placemat my son has says Springfield, IL is the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. 

As a homeschooler I try to come up with fun and innovative ways to present information.  Taking a field trip to a cave or battlefield, doing a hands-on project, are much more memorable than just reading a book.

I spend a lot of time trying to fill my son's head with facts--multiplication tables, dates from history, the taxonomy of a leopard, don't take candy from strangers.  What sticks should serve him well some day.   But the one thing I hope he remembers from his childhood is that I love him and God loves him more. 

You can read how other Homeschool Crew answer the question "What’s the one thing you hope your children remember from their childhood?" by clicking here.

K is for Kay Arthur

Here we are at another post for Ben and Me's ABC challenge.  Since the beginning I had planned on sharing about my Kindle, but several others beat me to it and I hate to be a copy cat.  I really struggled with what my K would be--I even looked for my 20 year old picture of me holding a koala bear.  But when I was organizing workboxes for the upcoming week I spotted the author of our Bible curriculum--problem solved!

I mentioned a few posts back that my Schnickelfritz is serving our church by running the sound equipment for the children's worship.  A requirement for the privilege/responsibility is to keep up a daily Bible study.  To meet this (and for homeschool) we've been using Kay Arthur's Bible studies for kids--Discover 4 Yourself.  It is still the inductive Bible study used in the adult program, but each lesson has an introduction involving Molly and Max and their dog Sam.  For the Daniel studies they were helping an aunt write scripts for a TV series,  in the Genesis studies they are helping an uncle with an archaeological dig.

I think what originally appealed to my son was wrapping his head around the idea that is was okay to color in his Bible--in fact it was a requirement.

Here we've been marking the key words of Daniel 2 where King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream about a large statue made of different materials: kingdom, God, (the "you/your" are all pronouns for the king and are marked the same as his name).  We also have underlined placed in green and made green clocks for time references. 

After marking the passages we may have questions to answer about the text or we may fill in a chart to make things clearer.  I wish I could find the book covering the second half of Daniel but I've apparently left it in a "very safe place."  Or Fritz has been looking through it--he still gets out former studies and reviews them on his own).  But here is the statue from Daniel 2.

I was a little hesitant to study the prophecy in the second half of Daniel--it's intimidating to adults never mind kids.  But everything was handled step by step.  It did this mama's heart proud to see her son reason out that the small horn in Dan  8 couldn't be the same as the little horn in Dan 7--one grew out of four horns and one grew out of ten.  He also made the connection between the four horns on the goat and the four headed beast and realized they referred to the same kingdom. 

If you're looking for a Bible study for your children I highly recommend the Kay Arther Studies.  Some studies cover books (or portions of books) of the Bible, one is a generic "how to study", and two cover Names of God and How to Pray.  The Bible books with studies so far are:

• Genesis (5 studies)
• Daniel (2 studies)
• Esther
• Jonah
• John (3 studies)
• James
•  2 Timothy
• Revelation (2 studies)

Since we've started these studies my son has insisted we do Bible study every day.  Sometimes he's even said Bible has replaced math as his favorite school subject.  I've been learning alongside my son so don't think these studies are just for kids.   I share all this as a customer, not a reviewer.  I've bought all the books in the series and we'll work our way through them.



FIRST Championships

Schnickelfritz and I don't just take "field trips."  We prefer to call them "adventures," and last week we took one of the greatest adventures of all---taking advantage of the FIRST Robotics championships being held in St. Louis.

You've heard that getting there is half the fun?  Well for Schnickelfritz that meant parking our car (for free) in the suburbs and taking the Metrolink to the Convention Center station.  Longer than any monorail at Disney World, we had nearly a half hour's ride.  Fritz was explaining to any of the commuters that would listen that this was a cantenary system (powered by overhead electric lines).

Behind us was a women that worked for a Washington University program to prevent drug use and childhood obesity in the local schools.  "He's homeschooled isn't he?" she asked.  I assumed it must be obvious since we were out on a school day, but she said she could tell by the way he kept asking questions.  She said the public school kids stop doing that--what a sad commentary if true.  Fritz had found a new willing ear and proceeded to tell her what he knew about trains, robotics, and orienteering (he thought other kids might like that form of exercise).

 She left us at the hospital station, but other passengers boarded including a gentleman from the state of Washington that was coaching an FRC team.    "Stop by our booth, we've got some handouts and I'll show you what the kids have been working on."   We followed him two blocks to the Edwards Jones dome.  Even if we hadn't known our way, I think we could have managed simply by following the bands of costumed teenagers--we saw green spiked hair, viking helmets, crowns and robes, even chicken heads (they were from Delaware--home of the Fighting Blue Hens).

We went into the dome first and were immediately overwhelmed by four sections of competition.  The younger kids were standing around tables with Lego robots. 

The older kids were divided into two categories--smaller robots putting balls in crates and larger ones shooting basketballs.  Clearly we needed more information to know what was going on and who to root for.  We headed to the pits.

After dawning our required safety glasses, we entered the large exhibit halls--all of which had been divided into "pits," areas for teams to work on their robots, relax, and act as ambassadors for their sport (and in some cases, country).  We saw teams from Israel, South Africa, Peru, Australia, even China.  All in all I believe there were 32 countries represented.  The booths were decorated in a theme that went with the costumes and many offered buttons or trinkets to passers by.  I guess its a lot like the Olympics have their pin trading.  We were especially pleased to get a little toy llama from the Peruvian team as we sponsor a boy through Compassion International from Lima.

All levels of competition (FIRST Lego League, FIRST Tech Competition, and FIRST Robotics Competition) all had practice areas where you could see the robots up close.

Here's a South American team trying to get their robot to autonomously (done entirely with pre-programmed commands) to drop payloads, collect others and drag vehicles around the table.  Their theme was "FOOD FACTOR" so everything dealt with safely bringing food from farm to table.

The FRC division appears to be the Sprint Cup of the event.  They took up a full half of the exhibit hall and tournament floor.  These robots start the competition autonomously for the first 30 seconds of play before "drivers" take control via computers and joysticks.

Although he enjoyed the interaction with kids, Fritz's favorite area were the sponsor displays--high tech companies with high tech toys.

Here we are in front of the next generation of Mars Rover at the NASA booth.  (Aren't those safety glasses fashionable?)

Here's Fritz controlling one of the army's surveillance robots--these guys go into the ditches and tunnels first looking for mines and booby traps.

And then it seems that they were a few souls with still extra time on their hands to make their own robots, strictly for entertainment purposes.  You should have seen the smile on my son's face when Wall-E  came rolling by and waved at him.

We stayed for over six hours that Friday and my son begged to go back on Saturday for the finals.  FIRST founder, Dean Kamen, started the organization in 1989 to For Inspiration and Recognition in Science & Technology.  He recognized that as long as America focuses the spotlight on athletes and actors we will continue to fall further and further behind the world in math and science.  So if my son is this geeked about a competition that involves math, science, computer programming, and physics you bet we went back the next day (even got Grandma and Grandpa to tag along).

This day was all about competition.  The best teams had formed "alliances" of three teams each.  They strategized about shooting baskets, stealing balls from the other side, and balancing all three robots on a teeter-totter in the final 20 seconds of play for mega-points.  Fritz usually rooted for the blue alliance (his favorite color) but if it was clearly going to be a blow-out he had no qualms about switching to the red side.  I had the opportunity to talk to a FRC mom who explained that the teams have only 5-6 weeks to builds these robots.  Her daughter had been in the computer lab until the wee hours of the morning using a CAD /CAM program to design their bot.

Fritz had snagged a front row seat to watch the Galileo Division's elimination rounds.  At on point the emcee through him one of the foam basketballs from the playing floor.  You'd have thought he'd just caught that homerun ball from Game 6 of last year's world series (which took place just a few blocks away).  A cameraman caught his enthusiasm on the Jumbotron.

We'll be back for next year's FIRST Championships, which will still be in St. Louis,  perhaps as spectators but Fritz is really hoping to be on a Lego League team.  If anyone has any experience with starting and coaching a team, I'd love to hear from your.