A nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism

Gray Middle School Master Builders to represent KY at FIRST LEGO League competition in California


By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor

The Boone County youths who developed the Safe Tackle Football Helmet   in an effort to help improve safety two years ago are back with an idea to create an urban habitat for an increasingly threatened insect species.

Members of the Gray Master Builders prepare their City Solitary Bee House on the grounds of the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens for habitation. The Gay Middle School sixth graders will represent Kentucky at the FIRST LEGO League Legoland North American Open Championship in Carlsbad, California (photos by Mark Hansel).

The Gray Master Builders and their City Solitary Bee House will represent the state of Kentucky at the FIRST LEGO League Legoland North American Open Championship in Carlsbad, California, May 19-21.

The sixth graders from Gray Middle School in Union have had some lineup changes since they were known as Mann Master Builders in 2015 because some have moved away. That year, the group from Mann Elementary developed a helmet with a modification that alerts players when their head dips below a certain level designed to help condition them to use a safer hitting technique.

The team that now consists of Landon Burlew, Christopher Howard, Zachary Kuchle, Julian Vykhovanyuk and Luke Zurad, and under the direction of Matt Zurad (Luke’s dad), used a similar process to come up with a completely new idea for this year’s completion.

“When the kids became global innovation ambassadors, they actually posted on the international blog a decision-making process and they used their own, to figure out what animal they wanted to follow,” Matt Zurad said. “It starts with brainstorming and then they come up with criteria to evaluate their ideas and then they pick the best idea.”

Guided by adult Coaches, FIRST LEGO League teams research a real-world problem such as food safety, recycling, energy, and are challenged to develop a solution. They also must design, build and program a robot using LEGO MINDSTORMS® technology, then compete on a table-top playing field.

Team member Christopher Howard said the group “came up with a bunch of ideas,” before settling on the Bee House.

Cincinnati Zoo horticulturist Adam Martinez helps members of the Gray Master Builders prepare some ‘bee-friendly’ plants at the team’s Bee House.

“We talked about whether it was a big problem or a small problem,” Howard said. “Then we discussed how easy it was to get experts, and if we need it in our area – and bees came out on top.”

Ideas that didn’t make the cut included projects with lizards, chickens (everybody wanted chickens) and even a less-serious flirtation with a rocket-powered turtle.

The team settled on the City Solitary Bee House to provide an alternative nesting environment in an urban area to help stem the decline in population due to loss of habitat.

The team lucked out when it came to locating experts.

Dr. Michelle Duennes of the Woodard Lab, Department of Entomology at the University of California, Riverside is originally from Crescent Springs. She also spent time at Covington Latin School and the College of Mt. St. Joseph and was very excited to join in and become a mentor on the project

Duennes had also done a lecture at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and made some connections there. She reached out to staff members and the Zoo signed on as a mentor, provided space for the Bee House and put Zurad in touch with Adam Martinez, a horticulturist there for eight years.

“I study honeybees primarily and ground-nesting bees is a little bit out of my range, so I told Matt from the get-go, ‘it’s a good thing you have Michelle,’ but I am concerned about their livelihood as well,” Martinez said. “It’s just great to see these young guys so excited.”

Martinez estimated there are a few thousand solitary bees, not all of which are ground-nesting, in this part of North America. He is not sure what kind of bees this environment will attract.

The Gray Master Builders City Solitary Bee House at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. The solar panel runs a webcam that allows team members to monitor the station.

“But encouraging the habitat and a place to live, is a nice prototype for people that are concerned about ground-nesting bees that might not have an area to nest,” Martinez said. “This could actually give them a home to live in and allow us to study their life cycle. It’s very interesting and I think it’s an awesome project.”

The team got help from its mentors, but also did quite a bit of research on its own. The habitat, for example, has a clear plastic front and blue sides, which Luke Zurad said was chosen because it is a color that attracts bees.

“The way it works there are a bunch of holes in the side that smaller bees can burrow into and they can also burrow into the top where they can make nests and lay eggs,” Luke Zurad said. “There is like egg, food, wall of dirt. The cool thing is, if one dies during birth, the others will somehow know that and they will dig around him to the other side.”

The zoo also has a list of plants that attract bees and the team planted some “bee friendly” flowers along the side of the habitat.

The house can hold up to 50 solitary bees. It also includes a solar panel that is used to power a webcam that allows the team to check progress at the Bee House.

“The concept from here is that bees in the city don’t have soil in which to live, so it would be a great thing for a rooftop garden or something like that,” Martinez said.

Jill Kuchle, mother of Zachary, said the FIRST LEGO League and this project are both really cool.

“It gives the kids a chance to use science and math and put them together, but it doesn’t really seem like science or math,” Kuchle said. “It challenges them, but they have fun at the same time, so they enjoy it but they learn something new and every year the theme is something different. “

There are several components to the competition. Teams have a project, which for Gray Master Builders is the Bee House. Teams also have to design, build, test and program a robot using LEGO MINDSTORMS technology. They have to program the robot to run through a course and they get points for that. Teams also get judged on the robot itself and the decsion-making process that went into its creation.

They also get judged on core values, which is how they get along together as a team and how they work with other teams, their partners and mentors.

In addition to representing Kentucky in Carlsbad, the team was awarded 1st Place for Gracious Professionalism® at the Kentucky Championship Tournament and a Robot Design Award for Strategy and Innovation at the Northern Kentucky Regional Tournament.

The team was awarded a $1,000 grant from the Engineers and Scientists Foundation of Cincinnati for travel costs to the North American Open Championship and, with Duennes, successfully filed a US provisional patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the City Solitary Bee House invention.

While at the National Championship, the team will also be able to visit the Woodard Lab at the University of California, Riverside and meet with Duennes.

This year’s competition includes 80 teams competing from the United States, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Korea, Brazil, and Spain.

Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com


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