Each summer, St. Mary’s College of Maryland hosts the St. Mary’s River Concert Series. Every Friday for six weeks the community of Southern Maryland and beyond gather to enjoy great music (provided by the Chesapeake Orchestra), local food vendors, the company of friends and family, and activities for the kids run by The RoboBees!
The RoboBees (in partnership with growingSTEMS) have proudly supported the St. Mary’s River Concert Series for 6 years. Every Friday they set up a booth with activities geared toward kids which promote STEM education. Whether they are there making and launching paper rockets or creating Gak, the RoboBees’ booth is almost always swarmed with kids eager to learn. It isn’t just the kids who have a great time; the students on our team love interacting with and teaching the kids.
In the case of our most popular activity, building and launching paper rockets, the kids are taught how to build rockets using paper and duct tape. The kids walk away with a sense of accomplishment having built their rocket and then watching it soar through the air – over cars, into trees, and sometimes to another street. Our team members also experience a sense of accomplishment seeing the smiles on the kids faces when they see their rocket launched, or the giggles when the kids feel what Gak is like in their hands. Not only do the kids learn STEM concepts while having fun, but our team members participate in critical outreach to our community, spreading the message of STEM and FIRST, and gaining valuable communications skills they will use throughout their lives.
The RoboBees are ‘More than just Robots’. We spend countless hours building robots each year, which is amazing, but we offer so much more. We are a group dedicated to developing a well rounded, confident and educated future generation. We instill the love of STEM, provide exposure to hands on activities, teach computer skills, as well as writing, photography and videography skills, and we teach the importance of giving back to our communities.