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!!

Today we got to meet three of the team from Watson Marlow, our gold sponsor for this competition.  Jo, Danny and John came over from their head office in Falmouth to watch our presentation and learn all about the team.  Jenna and Ada shared how they want to work in engineering and teaching in the future, Caio shared some incredible invention ideas that he’s been working on and the whole team shared their energy and passion for their projects and for the competition.

Danny works between the Falmouth office and their Massachusetts team so she was able to share a lot of helpful information about Boston which helped prepare us for the trip ahead.  We also enjoyed learning all about Watson Marlow as a company and learnt that their pumps are used in almost everything – from McDonalds milkshake machines to large industrial factories.

A HUGE thank you Watson Marlow for all of their support!

Thank you to everyone for the support at Pumpkin Fest last night.

We have now contacted everyone who has won a raffle prize. They will be in the Penpol School office to be collected from Tuesday onwards.

We raised a staggering £2370.92!!! Absolutely incredible.

A massive thank you again to everyone involved and for all your generous donations

Watch out America, the Pumpkins are coming to take over!!! 🎃🥳🇺🇸

Between the live music at Pumpkin Fest the Pumpkins had the chance to share their Innovation Project with everyone – but with a twist. Because there were so many people there they had to perform with a microphone for the first time. Did this worry them? Of course not!! They delivered their presentation with the usual mix of energy, enthusiasm and humour and received a phenomenal response from the audience.

I asked Miles how it felt presenting with the microphone and he explained “I was very nervous (especially when I messed up a line!) but overall it was a really great experience to hear my voice magnified with the microphone”

A huge thanks to local artist Ann Force who has created the cartoon version of the Pumpkins which you can see at the top of this blog.  As a special treat at Pumpkin Fest, the Pumpkins were all presented with their own copy of this fantastic artwork.

Tonight the Penpol Pumpkins had a massive party in their honour, called Pumpkin Fest! Organised by their parents we were joined by hundreds of people from the community, all supporting the children by buying raffle tickets, getting their faces painted, enjoying live music, buying delicious cakes and so much more!

This incredible community event was made possible thanks to all of the parents who pitched in together to organise it, with a special thanks to the Bird in Hand for letting us use their pub as the venue.  We had fantastic live music from Patrick Walker, Sandy Acre 7, The Ukehayles and Rumba Diablo who all sounded fantastic playing in the Cornish sunshine and plenty of food from the BBQ run by the Bird in Hand. A big thanks as well to all of the local businesses who kindly prizes for the raffle – this was a huge success with over 50 prizes to be won!

This evening seven of the Pumpkins assembled at Hayle Community Centre to meet Hayle Town Council.  Before this the Mayor of Hayle, Councillor Anne-Marie Rance and Deputy Mayor, June Lawrenson-Reid joined us outside for a photograph.

Once in the meeting itself the Pumpkins shared their experiences of the competition so far, the different elements they have worked so hard on and how excited they are to be going to America.  They also expressed our sincere thanks to the whole of Hayle and the wider community for all of the support with helping us reach our fundraising goal last week.

Once the children had shared their perspective, it was the turn of the Council to share theirs.  They were delighted to hear how well the children have done and how hard they’ve worked.  To this end they recognised their extraordinary achievement with a beautiful award in the form of an intricately decorated plate featuring the six different neighbourhoods of Hayle – which was a real honour to receive.