Awkward Silence 4-H Robotics Club making waves this summer with free STEM program

The Awkward Silence 4-H Robotics Club has been hard at work offering free summer camps all month to prepare for the upcoming season.

Hosted as a free event to the public every Saturday in June from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) camp has welcomed participants ages six to 18.

Located at 1651 E. Calvada Blvd., this Saturday will be the last day to check out the club’s free STEM summer camp.

“The first day we had 34 kids show up to the summer camp, which is amazing. Last week we had 24 kids come,” Awkward Silence 4-H head coach Jennifer Riendeau said.

According to Riendeau, each week the summer series has featured a new STEM activity. Students are given 10 minutes to discuss how they intended to construct their towers without being able to physically touch the materials.

Providing participants with lunch and all the supplies needed to hold activities, Riendeau said that the club spends about $200 per Saturday camp.

“The first week, we worked with the SPIKE LEGO® robotics systems and they built little mini robots. Last week, we did three more science-y things where we did shaving cream with food coloring and water to see the different effects of how the food coloring worked with the watercolor,” Riendeau said. “We also tried to see who could get the biggest tower constructed out of marshmallows and spaghetti noodles.”

Following the conclusion of last years robotics season, the club lost two graduating seniors, leaving the club with only two remaining members.

The Awkward Silence team was in rebuild mode, holding internal recruiting through 4-H with their FLL Challenge team for kids who were ready to graduate to the next level of robotics to the FTC age.

“We’ve added four more kids from the 4-H so we’re now up to six kids. Our goal is to be at about 10 kids for the season,” Riendeau said. “What people don’t realize is that it’s a very large commitment, both for the students and for the parents. We meet twice a week for three to four hours at a time and it can get pretty intense toward the end of the season.”

In addition to bolstering the team’s numbers this season, Riendeau said that it’s simply ‘more than robotics’ through the FIRST education program. According to their website, the organization supports educators by engaging students in STEM learning and prepares them for a future with real world concept applications.

During the league championships, students are given five uninterrupted minutes to present their engineering portfolios to a panel of judges.

“They’re going to teach public speaking, they’re going to teach cooperation, they’re going to teach how to work in a team setting,” Riendeau said. “They’re going to teach basically some forms of journalism because they have to put together what we call a engineering portfolio where they have to document their entire season, and then they have to summarize that entire season in 15 pages.”

Heading into the new season, the program will feature a new coach for the upcoming year as Riendeau’s son, Dylan, will be joining the program as a new assistant coach. Awkward Silence is also actively looking to add more mentors to teach kids Javascript programming.

Dylan is a former FLL Challenge program participant and knows what it takes to ensure kids will be successful in competitions.

Plans for a recruitment night fundraiser to grow the team size to 10 members are in the works for July or August, Riendeau said.

On average, the program’s robots cost roughly $5,000 to build and with travel to Reno on the horizon for the state championship, costs can climb close to $10,000.

“There’s scholarship opportunities for these kids and to be honest with you, I was one of those parents that thought there’s nothing in Pahrump for my kids to do. There’s nothing here and going on because my kids are not sports enthusiasts,” Riendeau said. “Kids are into technology, and that is really the future. So the scholarship opportunities are amazing through the first program. It teaches true life skills that you can take with you in almost any career option or choice that you have.”

Contact Jacob Powers at jpowers@pvtimes.com. Follow @jaypowers__ on X.