Events

Reserve your spot today on the Fab Lab’s FIRST LEGO League Explore Team! Space is extremely limited - the Fab Lab will field 4 Explore Teams, each with 6 students! Students will understand the basics of STEM and apply their skills in an exciting competition while building habits of learning, confidence, and teamwork skills along the way. In Explore, teams of students ages 6-10 (grades 2-5) focus on the fundamentals of engineering as they explore real-world problems, learn to design, and code, and create unique solutions made with LEGO bricks and powered by LEGO® Education SPIKE Essential. Every year, FIRST® LEGO® League releases a new Challenge based on a real-world, scientific theme. Get ready to splash into STEM learning and ocean exploration during the 2024-2025 ocean-inspired SUBMERGEDSM game. Teams will meet weekly 21 times throughout the school year, culminating in a regional competition (and possibly a state competition and beyond!). The team will follow a schedule of every Monday, excluding holiday weeks. Families will be invited to attend the first session on September 30, where a full schedule will be distributed and families will learn more about the FIRST LEGO League!

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Kids in grades 1 through 5
DATE: Mondays [EventStartDate] - [EventEndDate]
TIME: [EventStartTime] - [EventEndTime]
COST: [EventCost]

Reserve your spot today on the Fab Lab’s FIRST LEGO League Challenge Team! Space is extremely limited - the Fab Lab will field 2 teams of 5 students! Students will understand the basics of STEM and apply their skills in an exciting competition while building habits of learning, confidence, and teamwork skills along the way. Friendly competition is at the heart of Challenge, as teams of students in grades 6-8 engage in research, problem-solving, coding, and engineering - building and programming a LEGO robot that navigates the missions of a robot game. Each year, FIRST issues a new game/ challenge. Get ready to splash into STEM learning and ocean exploration during the 2024-2025 ocean-inspired SUBMERGED game. Teams will meet weekly 21 times throughout the school year, culminating in a regional competition (and possibly a state competition and beyond!). The team will follow a schedule of every Monday, excluding holiday weeks. Families will be invited to attend the first session on September 30, where a full schedule will be distributed and families will learn more about the FIRST LEGO League!

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Kids in grades 6 through 8 
DATE: Mondays [EventStartDate] - [EventEndDate]
TIME: [EventStartTime] - [EventEndTime]
COST: [EventCost]

Reserve your spot today on the Fab Lab’s VEX IQ Robotics Team! Space is extremely limited - the Fab Lab will field 8 teams of 5 students! VEX IQ competitions, geared for students in grades 3-6, guide student teams through design, engineering, driving and coding challenges while building the relationships vital to being part of a team. All students are natural scientists and engineers- they love to question, tinker, experiment and play. VEX competitions foster these skills and capitalize on the motivational effects of competitions and robotics to help all students create an identity as a STEM learner. This year’s game - RAPID RELAY - is a fast-paced, cooperative challenge that will have competitors and viewers on the edge of their seat. Teams will work towards the goal of attending and competing in regional competition, with the opportunity to reach state and even national championship levels! NOTE ABOUT REGISTRATION FEES: Thanks to a grant from Foundations Community Partnership, the price will be $150 to join this competition team! The true cost of joining this competition team would have been $799 - that's a $649 savings!

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Kids in grades 3 through 6 for the 2024-2025 school year
DATE: Mondays [EventStartDate] - [EventEndDate]
TIME: [EventStartTime] - [EventEndTime]
COST: [EventCost]

Reserve your spot today on the Fab Lab’s VEX V5 Robotics Team! Space is extremely limited - the Fab Lab will field 2 teams of 5 students! The VEX V5 platform offers students in grades 6-8 with the chance to build, code and control advanced robotics and compete against teams from our region and beyond. All students are natural scientists and engineers- they love to question, tinker, experiment and play. VEX competitions foster these skills and capitalize on the motivational effects of competitions and robotics to help all students create an identity as a STEM learner. This year's game, HIGH STAKES, is an exciting challenge where robots stack, climb and score while defending against the opposing teams. Over 11,000 teams from 40 countries will work through local, state and national tournaments on their path to be World Champs! NOTE ABOUT REGISTRATION FEES: Thanks to a grant from Foundations Community Partnership, the price will be $150 to join this competition team! The true cost of joining this competition team would have been $799 - that's a $649 savings!

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Kids in grades 6 through 9 for the 2024-2025 school year
DATE: Wednesdays [EventStartDate] - [EventEndDate]
TIME: [EventStartTime] - [EventEndTime]
COST: [EventCost]

SCHOOL'S OUT, COME TO THE FAB LAB CENTER! Bring the kids to the Fab Lab Center for a day filled with fabrication, coding, and engineering! Kids will engage in various coding/ robotics activities, engineering challenges, and fabrication activities that require collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity!

Join the Fab Lab's Aerial Drone Competition Team! Space is limited - the Fab Lab will field 12 teams of 4 students! It’s not a race. It’s a challenge. Take flight with the Aerial Drone Competition! Teams of 4 students in grades 6-12 will meet for two hours per week from October through early April. Teams learn about drones, flight principles, programming, documentation, and communication skills while expanding their understanding and building interest for drone-related workforce and career opportunities. Students pilot and program drones, and document their process in a competition logbook. The competition has FOUR focuses: Teamwork, Autonomous Flight Skills Challenge, Piloting Skills Challenge, and Competition Logbooks. Teams will use CoDrones to prepare for competition in the spring of 2025. Competitions are organized through the REC Foundation. Families will be invited to the first team meeting to learn more about the schedule and plans for the year! NOTE ABOUT REGISTRATION FEES: Thanks to generous grant funding from PECO, an Exelon Company, the total cost of joining the Aerial Drone Competition Team is $75. The true cost of joining this team would have been $799 - that's a $724 savings! Thank you, PECO!

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Kids in grades 6 through 8 
DATE: Thursdays [EventStartDate] - [EventEndDate]
TIME: [EventStartTime] - [EventEndTime]
COST: [EventCost]

Is your child wondering how to make their own YouTube videos?! In Video Production, kids will effectively learn techniques on how to create and edit video to make their own movies! Kids will move between the Stop Motion app and We Video. From story boarding, scene composition, sound production, and visual effects to using green screen technology, kids will have a blast while learning creative, useful skills!

This is the perfect club for beginning to intermediate coders that want to have fun as they dive into the world of coding and robotics! Each club meeting will feature fun challenges that students will code robots to complete. Kids will use Dash, Finch, Sphero, and drones throughout the club!

This club is where pixels will come to life and gaming dreams become reality! In this club, young gamers and creators will embark on an exciting journey into the world of game design using Bloxels, the innovative platform that transforms imagination into playable adventures. Through hands-on exploration and collaboration, students will dive into the fundamentals of game development, learning the art of storytelling, level design, and character creation. Armed with their Bloxels game boards and boundless creativity, kids will bring their visions to life one pixel at a time. This is a SATURDAY CLUB that will meet 5 times: October 12, 19, and 26, and November 2 and 9. A NOTE ABOUT REGISTRATION FEES: September 13 Update: Grant funds were not received for this club. Children that registered with a $50 deposit will be invoiced for the remaining $125. All new registrants will be charged the full $175 at the time of registration. Summer 2024 Statement on Fees: We are currently accepting a $50 deposit fee to pre-register for this Saturday Club! The Fab Lab has applied for grants that will significantly impact the price of joining this club- we will notify those who have reserved a spot in September as to the status of this funding and the final fees as noted here below. Your $50 deposit is non-refundable. If the grant funding is approved, the total fee to join the club will be $50 and no further payment or action is necessary. Should grant funding not be approved, the cost of this club will be $175. You will be invoiced in September for the remaining $125.

Ready to move beyond basic block coding? Hummingbird is a great next step! Design, build, and program a personally meaningful robot out of any materials, with any device, in multiple programming languages with Hummingbird. The power of Hummingbird is in its flexibility – the same kit can animate a poem, model a human arm, build an autonomous rover, or create a pinball machine. After learning the basics of Hummingbird, kids will design and develop their own personally meaningful projects - the possibilities are endless!

Bucks County School Districts are invited to learn, collaborate, and build on their action plans related to their STEELS (science, technology, engineering, environmental literacy, and sustainability) Standards implementation. Leadership teams can be established teams or new teams and should be composed of various STEELS leaders: central office, building leaders, and/or teacher leaders. The focus on this day will be the E-L-S of STEELS: environmental literacy and sustainability. District teams that engaged in the Bucks County Environmental Literacy Institute in June 2024 are invited to collaborate with their district STEELS Leadership Team. The Bucks IU STEAM team will provide STEELS updates, facilitate a STEELS learning experience (focused on E-L-S), and then facilitate a process for districts to continue to work on their implementation plan and collaborate with other districts on their plans. This is the first of two STEELS leadership team sessions for 2024-2025. Registration fees will provide a light breakfast and lunch.

SCHOOL'S OUT, COME TO THE FAB LAB CENTER! Bring the kids to the Fab Lab Center for a day filled with Rube Goldberg! Rube Goldberg Machines accomplish a simple task through an elaborately humorous and overcomplicated method. Students will be challenged to think outside the box and discover the unexpected kinetic properties in everyday objects as they design their own Rube Goldberg Machine (RGM). In order to build their contraption, students will research and explore simple machines and chain reactions and how they both relate to the world around them. From ideation to interaction, students will engage in creative thinking, critical reasoning, and teamwork as they engineer these truly unique machines.

AS SEEN ON TV! Turn on any home design show and you'll quickly realize that tiny houses are very popular these days! This STEAM Saturday session is kids' chance to have fun with the trend! Kids will engage in the engineering design process to design and construct a prototype of a tiny house. There will be awards for the most creative design, best teamwork, best prototype - and the list goes on! The main goals of this session are to be creative and have fun!

SCHOOL'S OUT, BRING THE KIDS TO THE FAB LAB! Bring the kids to the Fab Lab Center for a day filled with fabrication, coding, and engineering! Kids will engage in various coding/ robotics activities, engineering challenges, and fabrication activities that require collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity! The day will be divided into team-building activities, movement breaks, and independent and group exploration. Kids should bring two snacks and a packed lunch.

Ring in the New Year at the Fab Lab! Kids will ring in 2025 and celebrate with STEAM during the Fab Lab Center's 'Noon' Year's Eve Celebration! Kids will engineer a ball drop, code robots to celebrate New Years, and engage in other fun celebratory STEAM challenges! We will ring in 2025 at Noon with a light snack and juice!