Robotics club gets new charge at Lewes Elementary

A robotics club that formed the week before COVID forced the closure of schools has relaunched at Lewes Elementary thanks to the efforts of fifth-grader Noah Solovey.

As a school following the Leader in Me philosophy, Lewes Elementary encourages its students to take initiative and responsibility, said school counselor and club advisor Jason Scott, who said Noah is affectionately known as “the mayor of LES” for his enthusiasm.

“He took it and ran with it,” Scott said of Noah, who pitched his idea for the club to Principal Kim Corbidge, the PTO and students last year.

Noah said Scott sent him home over the summer with a robot to build. Noah enjoyed working through the engineering process, running into problems and figuring out how to fix them so he could modify his robot to work even better.

“It was pretty hard to do,” Noah said. “It was a lot of problem-solving, but I had a sense of accomplishment when I finished.”

With help from the PTO this year, Noah spearheaded fundraising to purchase a game board on which the robots operate.

His pitch to students was so successful that 60 kids applied to join the new club. To keep things manageable in its first year, the club is limited to 15 students, with three kids on each team. The group meets every Wednesday after school to create their disk-shooting robots.

Club members are still learning and are not yet ready for official competition, Noah said.

“We have fun building robots, and all the groups get along,” Noah said. “It has been a huge success and I’m so happy to be doing it. I feel like this will go on for a bunch of years at Lewes Elementary.”