FLL In a Week: Day 4 California Science Center; Day 5 Practice

I'm a Maker, I'm a starter. I love starting new projects, especially those that involve making something, and those that involve engaging with those who might make that something. I create a scavenger hunt for community of a very specific sort, and reach out via the Internet through a mechanism I've developed. It's called The Community Lemonade Game and it works.

Our Gauntlet of The Community Lemonade Game - The Challenge - is to gather FLL teams together in a week and compete on Friday.

DAY 4 We visited the California Science Center, the Space Shuttle, the Endeavor and the Giant external tank. The only one left on earth, because they were consumed with every launch. This last tank was built, but not used.

I'd thought our interpreter would lead the group and share what each display was about, but it didn't work out that way. There were too many things to see at the museum. So, I made sure to check out some of the equipment that might be used for attending to human needs. Food, toilet, even fuel by-products used for water.

The Hurricane Machine was very popular.

My visitors were very interested in practicing their Chinese. The Imax has Spanish translations, but not Chinese. But they wanted to see the show and try to understand.

Then back to the hotel where I shared the silk screens that I created using the students' images and the Thermofax. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to do this, as the Thermofax screen materials are becoming harder to find.

Day 5 - Will we make it?

Make Team T-Shirts

Make Poster Boards - We did one poster board with all three presentations potentially on the board. We covered the core values and talked about the fact that we only had time to visualize solutions (no time to iterate and do further research). We talked about the challenge being about human problems during long durations in space. We discussed presentation and decided it was ok to give a presentation without a poster board, but that the poster board gives us some help in remembering what we have to talk about.

Work on Robots - The kids were so engaged, it was pleasantly amazing. There was a lot of inspiration happening here.

BUT WAIT. There's the competition!

Delivery of a competition of any sort is a completely different task from team training and generation. It needs an entire team of folks. Hullo! Thankfully, Friend Mary and Friend Kathleen came together to find new Friends to assist. Neither had actually experienced a competition, but there were enough materials online to provide guidance. I'd attended competitions but never organized an FLL competition.

I will share about the competition in another post.

Trish Tsoiasue is a community builder based in Long Beach, California . She builds socially responsible, grassroots communities, believes in the power of play, has many hobbies and interests, and lots and lots of ideas. She is trained in LEGO® Serious Play and the Creative Problem Solving Institute's methods of intentional creativity. The communities she has created and in which she takes most pride are the Long Beach LEGO® User Group, Makersville and the Leading Edge Multi-National Games, which she has led since 2018. She is the inventor of the Community Lemonade Game, a mechanism for path finding and problem solving that she plays. She's convinced that one day you will play it too. Perhaps one day she will define the Community Lemonade Game so that more people can play it. You can find her experiential videos on her Squigglemom YouTube channel (please subscribe!), and when she's not blogging on the Patch, she's blogging on Squigglemom.net.