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Code Red’s own, unique robotics program for grades 4-6 students featured expansion and a brand new game in its 2024 sessions.  For the past couple years, NRG has been experiencing growth and success to the point where we have a good problem: how do we accommodate more than 25 students in a session?  This was true for both our summer camp and our fall NRG sessions in 2024.  We did not want to turn away students, so we adapted by dividing our NRG students into two groups: first time students and returning students.  For the first hour of each meeting, one mentor had the first year students and students spent their time assembling their robots, designing and building a manipulator for their robot, playing STEM games, and doing STEM activities.  Second year students spent that time learning programming basics and how they could program their own robots to complete an obstacle course using the sensors and servo motor with their robot.  For the second hour of each meeting, all of the students go back together again for drive practice.  This expansion means that Code Red can accommodate over 30 students in a session and continue to grow.

A highlight for the FRC students as they led the NRG program was developing another one of Code Red’s own games for NRG students to play with their robots in the fall session.  Like FIRST’s theme, this year’s game also had a water theme where we used little rubber ducks and rings as the game pieces.  This is Code Red’s SEVENTH NRG game, and like the others, we followed the process of developing a game with easy, medium, and hard forms of scoring, “autonomous”, teleop, and endgame sections in a match, and a point system that included ranking points.  This year, we took our game development to a whole new level by creating a mechanical method to place ducks into plastic rings from above then disperse those rings onto the field.  The end result was the exciting game of Save the Ducks, where students placed ducks into rings, then moved those rings into a “pond”.  The game was a hit with the students, and we look forward to using it again for summer camp in 2025.

With these celebrations of growth and success in place, Code Red ran its biggest two sessions of NRG yet.  Student had fun assembling their Arduino robots, building manipulators on the front to push game pieces, learning programming basics, playing STEM games, practicing their robot driving, and ultimately playing in the end-of-season tournament.  Code Red’s FRC students run the tournament serving as referees, scorekeepers, field reset, and robot queuing.  We even have our own software developed that runs matches complete with sound effects and live scoring.  At the end of the tournament, students received awards for most creative robot, most innovative robot, sportsmanship, and a judges award.  What an exciting way to end our sessions and a great learning experience for both the NRG students and our own FRC students.