Jacob Woolcock

After a nice evening walk to a nearby restaurant, I’m delighted to inform you all that the bacon in America does indeed meet with James’s approval!

After a really smooth flight (and a lovely shoutout from the Cabin Crew over the tannoy when we landed) we have arrived safely in America. As a special treat when we landed, the pilot invited us into the cockpit to see how the plane worked and pose for a photo or two!

We’ve also checked into our Airbnb and are now getting a bit of dinner before going to bed and hopefully beating the jet lag!

Watch out Boston, the Pumpkins are coming!! 🎃

Having made excellent time coming up, the Pumpkins have arrived at Heathrow Airport.

“It feels exhilarating and exciting being at the airport – having to fly to an international event is quite nerve-racking, but I feel that it’s such a big opportunity to show that we really are ready to represent our school, our county and now our country!” – Caio

“Best of luck from all here at RNAS Culdrose to the Penpol Pumpkins – the school children from Penpol School in Hayle who are heading off to the USA today to take part in the robotics competition First Lego League.
The team won the regional championships hosted at RNAS Culdrose, then the nationals and now they are aiming for the international title.”

A quick stop at Leigh Delamere for some breakfast and we’re back on the road again, just an hour and a half from London Heathrow. The Pumpkins are starting to reflect on the adventure ahead of them and what they’re looking forward to the most…

“I’m really looking forward to going to America because I really want to try some of their food. And I’m really excited because I want to meet teams from all over the world” – Ernie

Today we’ve learnt that there is actually a 4 o’clock in the morning, as well as the afternoon! Despite the early start we’re on the coach and officially on our way to AMERICA!!

Time for a snooze… 😴

We’ve just received a lovely Good Luck message from our teacher friend in Singapore, Aisha Kristiansen.  Aisha is the coach for two teams – the Roarbots and the LEGO Lions and the teams have been sharing ideas and tips all year through their shared Padlet board.  In the video she very kindly shared some advice with the Pumpkins about how to make the most of their upcoming International Final.

“I think that the most important piece of advice in the video was actually to have fun – because fun is the most important value of the whole competition.” – Miles

We’ve just completed our final practice runs for the Robot Games, earning a max score of 315 on our best run.  We’re really hoping to recreate this at the event in Massachusetts 🤞🏻

We also gave the robot a quick inspection before packing it away for travel and thank goodness we did – two pieces were completely broken!  Just goes to show how hard the robot has been working recently!  A quick bit of surgery and we’re good to go.

“You might think the day before we fly isn’t the best time to treacherously rip apart our robot to try and rebuild it – and you’d be right! Luckily, we fixed the robot and we’re excited to pack it away in our suitcase.” – Felix

“We realised after rebuilding that the gyro turn didn’t work anymore.  We went onto YouTube and found a great video from the LEGO Maskers which helped us do the gyro turn again!” – Jenna

A couple of weeks ago the Pumpkins visited Langage Farm biodigester to learn what happens to food waste once it’s collected.  They filmed this short video explaining how important it is not to let food waste go to landfill.  Please excuse the sound quality, it was very windy!!