Preschoolers, dads enjoy Mt. Gilead STEM night

Contributed Report

Preschoolers at Mount Gilead Preschool love a challenge! On Thursday, Jan. 26, Mount Gilead Baptist Church preschoolers and their fathers enjoyed a fun night of children’s engineering during the annual Father’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Night.

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Call 804-643-4414, ext. 3 Email: paidnotices@timesdispatch.com

Deadline is noon Friday for the following week’s issue.

After a taco dinner together, the Goochland High School Robotics Team, The Junkyard Dogs, led by mentors Ryan Maloney, Stephanie DeLoach, and Raymond Slaughter, shared their robot. The Junkyard Dogs robotics team demonstrated how the robot could move a ball from one place to another. The children enjoyed watching the robot, catching the ball and rolling it back to the robot to see it all happen again.

The team members in attendance consisted of Isaac Subudhi, Vienna Hill, Noah Saunders, Raleigh Trevino, Brayden Parrish, Collin Neale, and Conner Neale.

The Junkyard Dogs robotics team competes in the FIRST robotics competition each year.

The 2022 competition included picking up a ball from the ground and throwing it into a large hoop in the center of a basketball court while avoiding other robots playing defense.

After the robot demonstration, the dads and preschoolers had to work together to design a catapult that would throw indoor snowballs into targets, such as igloos and snowmen. They were also challenged to see how high and how far their snowballs could go. Lots of problem solving and teamwork was used to accomplish this exciting task. Local 4-H extension agent Cayla Walker joined in the STEM fun by helping PreK students to launch “stomp rockets.” The PreK students at Mount Gilead Preschool are Cloverbuds through the county’s 4-H program and enjoy extension lessons to correlate with the preschool themes.

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