by Madison White Franks
KILMARNOCK—The Northern Neck Family YMCA recently launched the Seventh-Grade Initiative (7GI).
Program coordinator Mark Favazza said the key objective in the 7GI program is to LEAD which stands for leadership, experience advocacy and development.
The four seventh-graders who participated learned to construct a robot which taught them patience, thoroughness, teamwork and peer communication.
The fall program will conclude December 4 with a demonstration for the public of all components the students learned that included building, programming and operating robots; building rockets, learning propulsion engineering and the value of Newton’s Three Laws; exploring electrical engineering by creating their own LED project; and flying drones using math to plot skills in order to do target acquisition and camera/video surveillance.