This is the season for new F.I.R.S.T. LEGO Teams to form. We found this a good flier to let the other parent in the club we founded know how we wanted things to go. I mostly used ideas from the young peacemaker.
Anyone is welcome to borrow it for their own club.
FLL Homeschool Team – Goals, Plans, Etc.
Welcome!
We are here to form a homeschool First Lego League Robotics team. We look forward to working with you for the benefit of all our children. It will hopefully be an enjoyable and rewarding time. This will be our first year running a team, so please be patient if things are a little disorganized!
My Promise as Coach or Parent (copied from the First Lego League Coaches’ Handbook)
The children come first. FLL is about children having fun and getting excited about science and technology. Everything my team does starts and ends with that principle.
The children do the work. This is their opportunity to learn and grow. The children on my team do all the programming, research, problem solving, and building. Adults can help them find the answers, but cannot give them answers or make decisions.
My team is comprised of ten or fewer members (all team members participate on only one team), registered as an official FLL team, and all team members are no older than 14 on Jan 1 of the Challenge year.
I will encourage my team members, other coaches, volunteers, parents and team supporters to develop and practice a set of FLL Values that reflects FIRST’s goal to change culture in a positive way by inspiring others through our team’s actions and words.
FLL Values for team members (copied from the First Lego League Coaches’ Handbook)
We are a team
We do the work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors.
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 in everything we do.
We have fun.
What is Gracious Professionalism?
Win-win attitudes and behaviors
Respect in action
Behavior Expectations for Team Members and their Families:
Our goals as a team line up with the goals of the First Lego League. We are here for the children; If they have learned a little about physics / mechanics, about the engineering process, about working with a team, and have enjoyed themselves, then we have been successful! We are here to build up ALL the children on the team. We are not here primarily to win a contest (but I won’t complain if that happens!) We want the children to learn to work together, to encourage each other, to build upon each other’s ideas, and to challenge each other. We want children to be able to express ideas and thoughts without fear of being made fun of or criticized, either by other children or by adults. (by the way, we are all in this together: not only does our team’s behavior and attitude at FLL competition affect scoring, but the coaches’ and parents’ behavior affects the score as well!)
This healthy team atmosphere will not happen if there is any negativity, put-downs, or sarcasm during meetings! Consequently, we won’t tolerate obscenities, vulgarities, blasphemies, rough joking, name calling or excessive sarcasm from anyone on the team. Parents, be sure to remind your children of this. A child will be reprimanded once, referred to their parents for them to discipline as they see fit on a second time, then asked to leave the team on a third time (in which case we will refund their parent’s money and make their slot available to another child). We may or may not keep careful track of the number of offenses.
When relative strangers gather around a goal, even when it is for the benefit of their children, there are bound to be some disagreements and awkward bits. Here is how we want us all (parents and children alike) to deal with these things: Go directly to the person who bothered you and explain the problem, unless you can forgive them without mentioning it. Try to do this within 24 hours of the offense. Do NOT discuss the problem with anyone else unless you are seeking coaching on the best way to deal with the problem (no gossip). If the problem person won’t work with you on the matter, get a third person to work with both of you as coach, arbiter, or mediator. The goal is positive progress, forgiveness and friendship. The means to do this are to admit what parts of the problem are caused by each of you, apologize and seek forgiveness. Real forgiveness is when you promise your acquaintance to think charitably about them, to not bring up the matter again to hurt them, to not gossip about them, and to resume the friendship enthusiastically.
Volunteer Jobs for Parents (this is NOT an exhaustive list, we will think of more as time goes on, so will you)
Coaches / Technical
Can help Dan with Coaching and/or the technical aspects of making a robot, researching the team project, etc.
Kid Wranglers
We need at least 2 other parents on site each build meeting besides Dan. Mostly for crowd control. There are some cringing-ly expensive pieces of equipment (and some very dangerous ones) in the lab, one bit of wrestling in the wrong place could make us all have to sell our cars and family heirlooms to replace it. This is a great job for Dads. We can rotate. We could even take the kids hiking at the pond behind Dan’s work after snack so they get some wiggles out.
Snacks
Got to fuel those creative brains! We don’t need to be nutrition nuts, but lets not serve sugary/caffeinated drinks, oxygen is stimulating enough for herds children at this age. I think a snack at the 1 1/2 hour break would be just about right. Could even be pizza. We can rotate.
Fund Raiser / Treasurer
Come up with creative ways to raise funds for the team. Manage team finances.
Web Tracker
– Being the official web tracker of interesting ideas and developments on the web
www.usfirst.org
www.firstlegoleague.org
www.ceeo.tufts.edu
www.legoengineering.com
www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu
Other Useful Roles:
– Printing off papers
– Making tee shirts or hats or some sort of team spirit thing-y with the kids, using their designs.
– Lead a brain storming session
– Work out our travel arrangements in January
– Help us find a good field trip site
– Help children with building /decorating the tri-fold presentation board.