4/7/2014 Meeting Recap

[Sean Arnold]

4-H Members AND Parents,

Please take some time to review this entire e-mail, there is a lot of information...

As a reminder of all that we discussed last night.

Future Meetings

Coach has committed to training for the Boilermaker 15K in July and, has been selected to participate in the WKTV Go The Distance training program, which meets Monday evenings.  Therefore, we will need to select a different night for our meetings.

The general concensus was that late afternoons, early evenings on Sundays may work.  Our next meeting will be this Sunday 4/13 from 5:00 - 7:00.  We will work on the teams' robots.

We have two teams that are preparing for the Robot Riot.  Our Sumo team of Sean, Hayden, Derek and Jayden.  Our Go Fish team is: Keegan B., Keegan T., Makayla and Jessalyn.  Derek has suggested that the Sumobot team may wish to work together to prepare the robot that he has started.

The two teams are encouraged to try to arrange times amongst themselves to get together to work on their robots.  I will try to make myself available for these meetings.  We can discuss this more on Sunday.  There are 32 days  left until the Robot Riot.

We have decided that our official 4-H Club meetings will be once a month.  This will be the meeting to which the public will be invited.  We will be creating a schedule of topics for discussion for each of these meetings.  Doing this will allow us to dedicate a single meeting to sharing what we aware doing with others that may be interested in what we are doing.

In addition, we will hold one business meeting per month.

Upcoming Events

Rome Home Show - 4/26-4/27, Kennedy Arena in Rome.

We will be exhibiting at the Rome Home Show to promote FLL.  The Arnolds and Birts will staff the booth on Saturday afternoon.  The Johnsons and Cooleys have committed to covering on Sunday (thank you).  I believe Keegan T. will participate on Sunday afternoon and am hopeful that Hayden will be available on Sunday morning.

Fundraiser and Demonstration at Tractor Supply Company in Utica 5/3 - 5/4

We will set-up some space at the store to demonstrate our robots, share information about our  4-H Robotics Club and raise funds.  We have decided to hold a bake sale at this event.  Andrea Johnson (Derek's Mom) has agreed to co-ordinate the baking activities.  We will probably set-up at store open until 2-3 p.m., each day.  We will be looking to split up the duties in a similar fashion to the Rome Home Show.

Charitable Team Activity

Jayden's Dad has shared with us an opportunity to give back to the community.  His employer will be donating some hygiene products to the local Rescue Mission.  He has asked if the team would be interested in re-packaging these products into kits that would be more suitable to individual distribution to those in need.  Of course, the team was eager to accept this opportunity.

I believe that about covers everything.  

For next meeting, please have each of the kids prepared to share with each other the best way to reach each other during the week (an e-mail address or phone number, etc.).  They will share this information amongst themselves so they may arrange to get together to work on their robots.

Also, I would like to identify one weekday evening a month for our public 4-H meeting.  I would like to try to schedule it on the same day, each month (i.e.: the first Neptday of each month).  If parents could be ready to have that discussion it would be most helpful.

Sorry for the length but, we had a very productive meeting.

Activities that still need to be planned:

1. Creating a Team / Club Banner for use at the Rome Home Show and TSC events.  We can also bring with us to the Robot Riot,
   
2. Arranging a time to assemble the kits for the Rescue Mission,
3. Determining the regular day and time of our monthly public meetings and putting a program in place for them.

Coach Sean.