Local 4-H'ers honored at 1st Lego League regional

[December 09, 2011]  The Logan-Menard-Sangamon County 4-H robotics team, Innovative Solutions, competed Saturday at the first Lego League Illini Regional Tournament in Urbana, alongside 34 other teams in this year's "Food Factor" robotics challenge. Teams presented unique solutions to solving the problem of preventing food contamination during the manufacturing, storage and delivery processes. Springfield's Mel-O-Cream Donuts provided the team with an exclusive tour of their factory, where the team learned how the product is carefully prepared and how the facility dedicates great efforts toward achieving the highest levels of worker safety and product quality.

In addition, the team built and programmed Lego Mindstorms robots to perform a series of missions during 2 1/2-minute competition matches. In their first year in this competition, the team -- including Logan County 4-H members Clayton and Grace Skelton, along with Elijah Clark, Ethan Blomberg, Kallie Cox, Micah Howard and Meredith Howard -- was awarded the Best Rookie Team Award in their regional tournament division.

Team sponsorship was provided by Mel-O-Cream Donuts, Twist-n-Swirlz, Broadbandcensus.com, Verallia Saint-Gobain Containers, GMP Local 71, GMP Local 117, Capitol Blue Print and the University of Illinois Extension. Many thanks go out to the sponsors, and congratulations to team Innovative Solutions for their exceptional achievement.

The master volunteer and team coach was Dr. Adrian Lee, who is an engineer and researcher in robotics. He kindly, generously gave his time, energy, knowledge and skills to the youth. The seven kids on the competing team were from a recently completed 4-H robotics special interest club, Green Dragons. There were 15 members in the club and Lee was the club leader for eight weeks. All of the kids in the special interest club wanted to continue their 4-H experiences, and a community 4-H club is being established out of this SPIN club. For those who are new to the delivery mode of a 4-H SPIN club, it is a short-term club that has kids with the same interest working on the same project. A community club, on the other hand, is a long-term club with kids who may be working on different learning interests.

For more information on the 4-H youth development program in the Logan-Menard-Sangamon Unit, as well as how to involve your children in Logan County 4-H, contact Patty Huffer or Amy Hyde in Logan County at 217-732-8289.

[Text from file received from Patty Huffer, Logan County Extension]