Our Previous Seasons
2023-2024 Season: MASTERPIECE
In our rookie season, we tackled the “MASTERPIECE” challenge. We qualified for State, and even made it to the World Festival in Houston!
We built a creative robot, which
performed well and was able to get about half of all available points.
For our Innovation Project, the Circuit Squirrels promoted a Montessori education through
use of a Virtual Reality environment to help people experience
Montessori classrooms. We also proposed hands-on museum exhibits about Montessori learning and
explored LEGO-based Montessori materials. With input from educators and experts, the team identified ways
to bring Montessori’s hands-on, child-driven methods to more families and communities around the world.
We learned a ton about teamwork and had a blast competing in our first qualifier. We even made it to the
State Championship!
2024-2025 Season: SUBMERGED
This year, our challenge was “SUBMERGED.”
Our team tackled the challenge of oyster restoration in the Chesapeake Bay.
Oysters are super important for the health of our bay, but they are in danger because of pollution and habitat loss.
We researched, brainstormed, and developed an innovative solution to bring back our oysters: S.C.O.R.B.s!
S.C.O.R.B.s (swiss cheese oyster reef blocks) are artificial oyster reef blocks that we designed to help the regrowth of oysters in our area.
We spoke to two marine biologists (from CNU and VIMS) who helped give us tips and inspire us to make these. Since oysters grow in tall stacks we
wanted something that’ll match the height oysters in any size. Taking inspiration from Lego we designed adjustable growth blocks that can match
any size and shape with because of two pegs on the top of the blocks that will connect to other blocks just like Lego. We wanted to replicate some
of the characteristics of real oyster reefs so we put holes into our blocks because in real reefs animals live and hide from predators in those holes.
(Swiss cheese because of its holes.)
If we put this into the water it should help the ecosystem just as a real reef should.
We want to help by:
- Encouraging people to “adopt” oysters
- Educating people to be mindful about our oysters
- Building better artificial oyster reefs
