Why it's worth it

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by Budda648

Yeah, that would be nice and I wish it were that easy. There's no "Caterpillar-like" interest in the Quad Cities.

John Deere, who's Corporate Headquarters are in Moline, Illinois might just take exception to that quote!

[Kims Robot]

Thats such a cute story!!

I think the answer is there is no age requirement to join FIRST. We have a student who is the brother of one of our juniors. I think he's 10 now, and he is probably one of the best CAD designers on the team! The night of his birthday would have been a typical robot build night (during build season), and he had told his parents that he wanted to have his "party" at Robotics... he didnt want to go out to dinner, or do anything else, he wanted to be at robotics Unfortunately, school was canceled that day... but we hijacked the robot and some tools from the locked school and headed over to Harris with a portion of our team. He said that was the coolest birthday ever!

Another even younger story, when I was in high school one of the engineers had a son the year I joined. When the little boy was 3 years old, he would always tell his dad he wanted to go see the BIG ROBOT!! He would come in, laugh & play with the robot, and then sit on the floor in our little makeshift field room and sort nuts & bolts... at 3 years old!

Kids are amazing... and they definitely brighten your day. Never underestimate them!

[Kyle]

This is one of my favorite things about FIRST, the fact that any man, women or child can see how amazing and fun FIRST really is.

When MOE dose demonstrations we sometimes bring out or 2001 Championship robot Lil MOE we put a glove on the arm used to lift up the 2001 platform and shake and high five kids hands with it and the kids love it, they walk up to shake a robots hand and some have even talked to it and waited for a reply. It is great that more and more teams are showing off their hard work to younger kids because if you can get them involved in the JrFLL age and they see how much fun it its you will have a kid who can go from jrFLL-FLL-VEX-FRC and FIRST's mission will be complete.