A Pirate's Night Before Christmas

Just wanted to share a little something with you guys today

A Pirate’s Night Before Christmas

A Pirate’s Night Before Christmas written by Philip Yates and narrated by Mike Benner

December 11th : Gilbert Riparian Preserve 2.0 Miles 0.5 Difficulty

December 18th : Piestewa Peak Alternate Summit 0.8 Miles 1.5 Difficulty

January 15th: San Tan Regional Park (Moonlight) 1.3 Miles 1.5 Difficulty

January 22nd: North Mountain 1.42 Miles 2.5 Difficulty

January 29th: Shaw Butte 2.7 Miles 2.0 Difficulty

Tanner’s Thoughts

The bot design is much better this year.  We can attachments in more ways and much easier than last year.  The board this year is harder because there are more things on it than last year.  The challenges are harder this year because it feels impossible to get 100% this year.  The topic this year is better because it is something you never thought was a problem.  The team this year is better because we argue a lot less.

Ryan’s Thoughts

This year Lego League has been awesome.  There are less people so now everyone is involved.  Unlike last year when some people were sitting in the cornering watching instead.  This year the board has more challenges so is more exciting.  The challenges are difficult and easy.  The topic is also better because it has a variety of things that can be chosen from it.  The bot design is also better for adding attachments and easier to line up.  In conclusion, I think this year is better than last year.

As many of you know we run a First Lego League team here at Gangplank Jr. This years theme is the Food Factor Challenge and deals with Health and Safety in the Food Industry. Part of the competition is coming up with a 5 minute presentation on a specific topic within the theme and this year the team has decided to do their presentation on the cross contamination of food, specifically cutting raw meat and then cutting fruit and vegetables with the same knife. The kids have decided to share some of their research with our readers to bring awareness to the problems and solutions to help prevent illness. This will be a weekly post over the next couple of weeks as they get more information to share with you. So without further ado here is something from the first two contributors Josh and Nick:

We learned that cross contamination makes 5,000 people die a year and 76 million people get sick. This happens because people are cutting bacon, meat, steak, chicken, etc. Then people don’t wash the utensil and then cut veggies or fruit. Food Poisoning, Salmonella and other bacteria gets into the food, then transverses to a person’s body. They get sick and about 3 weeks later they either die or get well. So please when preparing food please wash your hands and your knives when cutting meats.

If you are already a part of the Gangplank Jr First Lego League, we will be unveiling this season’s mat and challenges.  From 10am-12pm on Saturday, we will assemble the boards for this year and discuss the various tactics we can use to achieve the missions. There will also be a Sumo bot challenge (2-4pm), a large master building session with Building Bonanza and a free robotics build to handle various challenges (12-2pm).

Sunday will start off with First Lego League information for this year’s challenges and a chasis build competition, followed by another master build session from the guys at Building Bonanza.

As if all of that wasn’t enough to excite you, a full size replica of a Harley Davidson will be built from Legos by certified Lego artist Nathan Sawaya over the course of the two days.  Don’t miss out on the family fun at this great event.

The Gangplank Jr Journalism Program seeks to build upon this natural curiosity, teaching kids to use their powers of observation to inform others. Participants will learn the importance of the first amendment, how to write different types of stories such as news and feature, podcasting, video as well as create a working news site as the final product.

The Gangplank Jr Journalism Program takes place over 9-weeks, beginning July 9th. Meetings will take place each Saturday at 2:00pm. Kids must attend at least five of the meetings in order to participate in the ‘First Issue’ workshop on September 9th.

Please join us for our first meeting on Saturday, July 9th at 2:00pm at Gangplank.

We run several teams at Gangplank and are in our second year.  The author’s experiences and tips are wonderful.  Even some of the simpler things that would seem obvious are mistakes we have made in our first year and when I read them I thought, “Well, duh, why didn’t I think of that?”.  The reason is simple inexperience.  As basic as Legos are, the First Lego League can really make you have to do some complex things with those Legos and that can lead to missing many of the items pointed out in the book.  Also, the time to really get your bot and presentation goes by extremely fast.  I am looking forward to implementing some of the techniques in this book this year to help optimize that short time we have to get ready.

At our next meeting in June, I am going to recommend to all of our parents and kids that they pick up a copy of the book and read it and for our mentor’s this will become required reading.

Winning Design LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Design Patterns for Fun and Competition by James Jeffrey Trobaugh

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Contests are a great way to get your kids involved, inspired and using their natural creativity! Right now there is a contest underway for kids from grades K-6 who live or go to school in Chandler. The task is for the kids to create a poster surrounding the theme, “Chandler Municipal Airport. Your neighbor for more than 60 years.” This is the 2011 Poster Contest for Chandler AirportDayz on April 16 &17. AirportDayz is a weekend of aviation fun with food, music, displays, rides (for a fee), and an airport history exhibit. How much fun would it be to research planes together online, look at pictures, find the science (physics) behind how planes fly. Then they can research the Chandler Municipal Airport and what kind of planes fly in and out of there. Lastly, let your child’s creativity run wild. The Grand Prize is a flight over Chandler in a Piper Archer or a Great Lakes bi-plane!

Here are all the details:

Entries are due no later than 5:00PM on Friday April 8th. Posters should be no larger than 14 x 22 inches. The judging criteria will be based on incorporation of theme, composition, presentation, technique and subject.
The website below gives you the address where you will turn in your poster, and the entry form. The entry form is on the website as well. There is more great information about AirportDayz as well at www.chandleraz.gov/airport.

http://www.chandleraz.gov/content/AirportDayz_PosterEntryForm.pdf

So, here’s to research, art, and creativity!
Good luck kids and most importantly, have some dangerous fun.

April 17th from 2-4pm at Gangplank we will be hosting a learn to tattoo event for kids 8 and older.  Artists Nate “Nasty Nate” Houtz, Adam “A-Bomb” Molina and Johnny “Jevvy Jev”  from Tabü Tattoos will be on hand to go over the equipment, keeping things sterile, stenciling and much more.

This is a hands on event.  The kids will be tattooing grapefruit, oranges and any other citrus we can get our hands on with REAL tattoo machines, ink and needles.  For those that want to take it to the next level several Gangplank Jr supporters have even offered up their skin for actual tattoos from the new apprentices.

You must RSVP for this event as space and machines will be limited.  Please leave a comment below if you plan on attending.