ISO: MoCo Robotics Club (outside of school)

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know of a robotics club that my child could join that would meet outside of school and participate in competitions/tournaments?

We live in Silver Spring MD (near Chevy Chase) and my child attends a small school that has no robotics club.

[Anonymous]

I have been wondering the same thing! What grade is your kid?

[Anonymous]

I think the Montgomery Blair robotics team does outreach programs for robotics and programming classes for kids in younger grades. They came to our elementary school pre-pandemic to encourage kids to get involved with robotics.

I’d send them an email and see what they offer or if they know of other opportunities in the county.

[Anonymous]

Some of the middle school have Lego robotics teams, but it is very, very hard to make them successful. Activity bus schedules, and the fact that the main competition in December really makes it hard to get a functional competitive team. Plus a lot of the kids are immature and just want to play around. They are kids after all and tired at the end of the day.

The most successful teams are parent led and typically meet on the weekends for at least a few hours. The parent involvement means lots of support, organization, and student focus.

However, the successful teams don't often just like to accept new members for a lot of obvious reasons and the teams often come and go as the kids age out.

Look into setting up a team with your child's friends. A Lego kit is like $400. Registering and buying the practice field for that years competition is like $500 or so from what I remember. Spread around the cost to the families. Most important is to set up a schedule and require parent involvement and students participation. Don't turn into cheap daycare.

[Anonymous]

I’m looking for the same thing and live near you. kid at a small catholic school. My child has done robotics camps and definitely the cool college counselors are the draw, not “annoying” parents. Would be great to find a weekend club.

[Anonymous]

We don’t live near you (Germantown area) but my son is interested and going into middle school- maybe a few of us can create a team together?

[Anonymous]

Check out the Rockville Science Center. They used to have a club pre-covid. Hopefully, they still do!

[Anonymous]

It might require finding a first lego league (fll) team or starting your own. i have coached my 3 girls teams for the past 5 years or so - it is just them and some of their friends so we meet at our house. but it can be a lot of work as a coach and an investment. there have been a few posts recently about people getting rid of their materials so you could look for that. the maryland fll website it pretty terrible. both rockville library and kid museum used to have some sessions to teach this as well.

[Anonymous]

FLL is kind of the default experience for robotics clubs in middle school and high school.

Be aware that FLL Lego at the Middle school level requires a big community project related to whatever the theme is that year. This was basically added to prevent parents from doing all the robotics /programming work and winning the competitions early in FLL life.

[Anonymous]

8th graders can also form an FTC team that is community based. Compete with high schoolers. Cost prob around 1000$ for the season.