Past projects 3
Improving Engineering and Fine Motor Skills With Crochet
Funded Jun 4, 2024With a group of almost 20 new members on our robotics team this year comprised of students working on mechanical and electrical engineering, programming, media management, and community outreach it is a rare occasion we have several of our student members engaged in activities that are offline. Our goal was to help our students develop their hand-eye coordination and to build their confidence with learning something new. After a few sessions with our students, we accomplished just that through this project.
The students who were around when the project was first created helped open the boxes and they were just so excited to follow up on their vision of helping our teammates to bond. We set about finding patterns and things that we wanted to make to introduce our team members to this new skill set. The students set up time to meet during several of our regular team meetings with a few of their teammates when we knew we would have some downtime and set about teaching the basics. Members of the team new to crocheting, both new and old, worked on mastering techniques for starting a chain stitch and took the afternoon to learn how to hold the yarn, start their stitches, and to complete a row of 20 stitches. Further iterations of the work led to the creation of flower petals and circular patterns that have inspired some of our team members to continue some work at home.
The students are very grateful for the supplies and opportunity to both teach and learn something that fall outside of their normal work with our team. Our hope is to continue to teach so that we can eventually make flowers and other amigurumi (character crochet projects) and use this as a re-centering technique for those challenging days during our regular season and ways for our students to express themselves more creatively using their hands.
From our students:
"Dear DonorsChoose Supporters:
Thank you so much for your generosity and support! We are so excited to use these materials for team activities, as well as future sales of our creations to help fund the coming build season. As the year goes on, they will give us the opportunity to learn new skills, express our creativity, and bond as a team. The impact of your support will be felt far beyond this project. Thank you!
The TechKnights, FIRST Robotics Competition Team 334"”
With gratitude,
Ms. Doherty
Team Spirit, Creativity, and Collaboration
Funded Feb 8, 2024I was pleasantly surprised to find that our Robotics Team students who normally are fairly reserved and quiet during our regular meetings have found a great passion for making pins and stickers to give out at out competitions this season. From the moment the students helped open and start working with the Cricut machine, button supplies, and sticker paper, they have been inspired to create designs they feel best captures the team logo and energy for this season. The sub-group of student who have taken on the task of making team buttons has created more than 8 variations of our team logo and fashioned a set of limited edition pins which were a huge hit with other teams at our first regional competition in the middle of March.
The best part of having access to these items they created was watching our newest team members find another purpose for themselves as part of the team as well as how trading these items with other teams has created new friendships and shared experiences with others promoting their own team pride. Additional buttons and stickers were created to give out during our annual Homecoming event which helped us secure some additional support from other school alumni not originally familiar with the team.
The team has plans for future activities including creating "thank-you" cards for donors and families who have supported the team this season as well as the creation of items to use for fundraising both inside and outside the school at the end of this year and next fall. The creative possibilities for our students will have great impact on many groups of students on our team in the future as well as we explore additional uses for the tools..”
With gratitude,
Ms. Doherty
Promoting Team Spirit, Creativity, and Collaboration
Funded Feb 21, 2018After a whirlwind of a build season and competition for our Robotics team, the group has had some great experiences bonding over how we have presented ourselves at home and at competition. This year, with your help in purchasing a button maker and color printer, our students have been able to give away mementos this season which we know our team parents, team sponsors, and students and mentors from other teams will cherish.
One of the traditions we have officially become a part of this year at the Robotics events is for teams to give away some representation of who they are. The team buttons that we made and gave away this year have represented a token of appreciation to individuals and teams that have shown support for our group's efforts. Numerous children and adults wore our pins proudly at our competitions and kept trying to collect one of each of the designs. This year, being able to print our own designs for both buttons and stickers made our team a big hit in the pit area of the events. The students designed three different event based logos and assembled about 150 buttons to give away this year. The color printer also allowed us to print sticker sheets to have similar giveaways from the team when we ran out of buttons after our first competition.
The media group on the team had a lot of fun learning to set up the printer and began brainstorming ideas about how else we could use the printer to help promote the team for seasons to come. We even got new, seasoned, and mentor members to learn how to make buttons and create stickers, which made the process a great new way to practice team collaboration as well. During our off-season time, the team is regrouping and planning out new designs for next year along with additional ways to use these tools to help raise funds for the team using our new equipment.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Doherty