homeschooler the UtahUtah May 2026THE UUtahtah HOMESCHOOLER Volume 2, Issue 5 ·· May 2026 Executive Director Editor in Chief Supporting Editor Sales & Marketing Harold Godfrey Della Hilton Anna Owen Clara Warrick PUBLISHED BY The Homeschooler Magazine support@TheUtahHomeschooler.com MISSION STATEMENT To provide community, resources, and support for homeschooling parents, and to recognize and inspire excellence, creativity, and exploration in homeschooling students. CELEBRATING AND INSPIRING EXCELLENCE You could be in the next issue of The Utah Homeschooler! As we come to the close of our second year, we’d love to hear from our readers. What have you enjoyed most? Are there topics, resources, or features you’d like to see in future issues? How can we continue to improve The Utah Homeschooler to better serve your family and the homeschool community? We truly value your feedback and ideas as we plan for the year ahead. Please send comments, suggestions, or story ideas to: support@TheUtahHomeschooler.com STUDENT SPOTLIGHTS Tell us about the fun, interesting, and exciting things you’re doing in your homeschool! Share the fascinating, inspiring, or unforgettable books you’re reading! Which is better: books or movies? Write an opinion essay and tell us why. BOOK REVIEWS OPINION ESSAY Writing Contest ••• Stock images from Pexels, Pixabay, Freepik, and Vecteezy. Features Student Submissions Resource DirectoryBut an hour was long enough to figure out what was going on with their code and hopefully get it working again. They pulled up the code on the computer and started making changes, swapping motor control blocks in the critical run for PID myBlocks. Only a few minutes had passed when Melissa’s phone rang. She listened with concern, then alarm. “Let’s go!” she exclaimed. “They were wrong! Our last match is right now, and we are already late!” The team had tested the code only one time with the new changes. With nothing to lose they decided to use the new code, grabbed Shpingledary, and ran. They reached the robot game table, set Shpingledary in the starting position and—“3, 2, 1, LEGO!”—pushed the button to activate the robot. With tense anticipation, they watched their robot navigate the course, executing the instructions they had just re-coded to complete task after task. When it finally reached the end, they knew they had met their goal! The referee counted up the score, a whopping 410 points! They had climbed from 11th place to 3rd in a single match. Now they could be considered for some top awards! The rest of the competition flew past in a blur and the award ceremony finally arrived. The boys sat on the edges of their seats, grinning nervously back and forth and bouncing with anxious anticipation as they awaited the final announcement: who won the Champions Award—the highest honor possible at the state level and the only award that came with that highly coveted invitation to the World Festival in Houston? The microphone echoed through the auditorium as the announcer readied for the final reveal: “Let’s hear it for…. The Code Crusaders!” With shouts of jubilation and arms raised in triumph, the boys rushed to the stage to claim their prize. They gathered around each other and held the trophy high as the reality of their accomplishment sank in. When the Code Crusaders met in August at the beginning of the new robotics season, they already had one big dream: making it to the world competition in Texas. The homeschool team talked about Texas constantly, setting their sights on the goal from day one. After three years of hard work, long practices, problem-solving, and dedication, that dream became reality—they were going to Texas! 2... 3... LEGO! 1... T hey said we have one hour,” Coach Melissa Madsen told the boys of the Code Crusaders team. The State FIRST LEGO League Competition was drawing to a close, and Shpingledary—the LEGO robot they designed, built, and coded themselves—was not working as it should. They had one round left in the competition, one last chance to get it performing as they knew it could. In their many practices at home, they had been able to earn over 400 points, but so far, their efforts at the State Lego Robotics championship had netted them just over 300 points. 4 | The Utah Homeschooler3, 2, 1, LEGO! | 5 Lincoln CODER & ENGINEER PROJECT LEAD Age 13 Zed CODER & ENGINEER Age 11 Camden CODER & ENGINEER SECRETARY Age 13 Melissa COACH Hyrum CODER & ENGINEER CHIEF ENGINEER Age 13 Archer CODER & ENGINEER Age 13 Gideon CODER & ENGINEER CORE VALUES LEADER Age 12 Martin CODER & ENGINEER Age 11 Tanner CODER & ENGINEER CHIEF CODER Age 14 The Code The Code Crusaders Crusaders At the practice tables at the Husky Qualifier On the edge of our seats, waiting to find out who won. We won the Husky Qualifier! State—Here we come! Trying despearately to fix our code at State.But getting to that moment hadn’t been simple, and it certainly hadn’t happened in a single season. Most of the Code Crusaders had spent the last three years building, coding, designing, testing, and competing together. Through countless iterations, engineering challenges, redesigns, and problem-solving sessions, the team learned that success rarely happens on the first try. What looked like one triumphant evening in the spotlight was actually the culmination of thousands of hours of work, setbacks turned into learning opportunities, and an incredible amount of persistence, teamwork, and determination. PLASTIC BRICKS, REAL ENGINEERING FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a nonprofit competition program designed to teach kids engineering skills, coding, and teamwork. Like the boys did at State, teams compete on a four-by-eight-foot game table, where their autonomous robots earn points by completing a series of physical missions—pushing levers, grabbing objects, moving pieces—all without anyone touching the robot once it leaves the launch area. Each two-and-a-half minute match is the result of months of designing, coding, and iterating. “Kids going through FIRST LEGO League are developing engineering skills that I learned in college,” Melissa Madsen explained. “They’re using the exact same engineering systems and design process to innovate and create something new. The only difference is that they’re working with plastic bricks instead of metal hardware.” And Melissa, the Code Crusaders’ coach, should know. After studying mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University, she worked for several aerospace engineering companies before getting involved with FLL eight years ago. Now she owns and runs Code N Bots in Draper, Utah, where she teaches classes and runs after-school clubs for coding, robotics, and 3D printing for kids ages 6 to 14. That blend of real-world engineering experience and years of coaching gives her a unique ability to shape kids into well-rounded competitors—because thriving in FLL takes a lot more than just building a good robot. In addition to designing and programming robots, teams are also judged on an innovation project, a robot design presentation, and something the program calls “core values”—an emphasis on gracious professionalism and what FIRST calls “coopertition,” a blending of cooperation and competition. “The Core Values really emphasize gracious profess- ionalism, team work, having fun, and learning new things,” explains Melissa. “The other team is someone you help. If they drop their robotics parts, you help them. If they lose a piece, you give them a piece. You do everything you can to be friends and help them out, and then at the game, you do your best.” That spirit extended to how the team treated each other, too. “As core values leader, I try my best to keep the team in good spirits even when the robot fails,” Gideon said. “We developed team chants to cheer on the robot and even came up with a name for the robots that helped make things funny, because, well, why not have a name for the robots? The names of our robots are Shpingledairy, Boofleshnort, and Grinkyfloople. It made me happy that the robot had a silly name, and it was also funny to hear people chanting, ‘Boofleshnort!’ during our competition! The team seemed happier and it kept our spirits up to have some silliness in the middle of a stressful match.” For the Code Crusaders, those values were put to the test across all four areas of competition, starting with their innovation project. ARTIFACT FINDER APP The Code Crusaders began their season in August when FIRST announced this year’s theme: archaeology. From there, the team had to identify a real-world problem related to the theme, design a solution, interview experts, build a prototype, and present it all to a panel of judges. The team chose to solve the problem of the illegal relocation and destruction of artifacts. “Sometimes people will grab or relocate artifacts,” explained 14-year-old Archer, one of the team’s designers. “The problem with that is when archaeologists come in, either the artifact isn’t there entirely or it’s not in its natural position. So it kind of damages history entirely. Our app lets people come through and take a picture instead. It sends all that data to the archaeologists.” From just a photo, the Artifact Finder app 6 | The Utah Homeschooler SHPINGLEDARYSHPINGLEDARYcan generate a 3D model of the object, using AI to estimate the shape of the artifact on the side that can’t be seen. Then users can either order a 3D print of the artifact or print it themselves. This way visitors to historical sites get to take something physical away from their interaction with the artifact without removing or damaging part of human history. When asked how they came up with the idea, Archer explained: “First we brainstormed seven or eight ideas. We ranked them all by what would have the most impact, be the most fun and engaging, and the least expensive to produce. We used that data to help us decide which one would be best.” Their research brought them to Range Creek Field Station, a site rich in Native American artifacts including arrowheads, bowls, baskets, and granaries. The team connected with Shannon Boomgarden, Director of the Range Creek Field Station at the Natural History Museum of Utah, who became their expert contact and even gave the team a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum’s collections. Initially, the kids wanted to include location data for discovered artifacts in the app but learned that sharing artifact locations publicly could actually put the artifacts at greater risk of theft or disturbance. After consulting with the State Historic Preservation Office, they redesigned the app to focus on the 3D modeling component instead. The app has caught the attention of archaeologists they’ve spoken with and is currently being developed for release on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. You can try it out for yourself by downloading the ExpoGo app, and then using the QR code above to run Artifact Finder inside the ExpoGo App. THE LONG ROAD TO HOUSTON In the weeks and months leading up to the Utah State Championship, the team spent dozens of hours designing and building their robot and the many attachments it would need to complete the different missions. Although some students have “official” titles like “Chief Engineer” or “Chief Coder,” every student helps with the design, construction, and coding required for each run. A run consists of everything the robot does from the launch area to each mission it interacts with and back to the launch area again. Each run is spearheaded by two team members. They seek assistance from others as needed but they are ultimately responsible for the finished run. A match is the actual 2.5 minute game time, where two students launch the robot for their responsible run and then switch with two others until all the runs are finished, four runs in all for Code Crusaders. Being a homeschool team gave them an edge that they say made a real difference. “Homeschooling makes it so we can actually come in for more time and work on our stuff more often,” said Hyrum. “Without that, we wouldn’t be where we are." And Camden agrees, “As homeschoolers, we just have the time to come in, so we’re able to do a lot more work than other teams.” By the time they arrived at the Utah State Championship, the Code Crusaders had already participated in a practice competition in November and won the Champions Award at their regional qualifier in January, so they weren't strangers to competition pressure. But State was a different beast entirely, with more than 44 teams competing for just a single ticket to the World Championship. And as we already know, the day didn’t go smoothly. When the scheduling chaos hit and the boys had to run barely tested code in front of the referees, it was that months-long foundation of hard work that carried them through. Zed, another team coder 3, 2, 1, LEGO! | 78 | The Utah Homeschooler Team pit at Worlds. Lewis, our team mentor, supporting the Code Crusaders in some late night hotel room coding during Worlds. WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP — HOUSTON, TEXAS Waiting in the “queuing up” area before heading into a match at Worlds. Texas Bar-b-que and Blue Bell Ice Cream with the team families at The Pit in Houston. Tanner collected a lot of pins from other teams at Worlds. Archer repairing “IF” the Inspection Frame, team coding and troubleshooting, and the team mentor calculating coaching hours! 3, 2, 1, LEGO! | 9 Code Crusaders at Table 14 opposite The Quantim Bits from Romania. They are about to begin their second match at Worlds! The entire team and suport crew—parents, grand- parents, coach, mentor, and siblings—at Worlds! WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP — HOUSTON, TEXAS Out of nearly 200 teams at the World Championship, Melissa Mad- sen was one of only six coaches selected to receive the Coach/ Mentor Award. The nomination was organized by team mentor and FLL graduate, Lewis Madsen, who hand-wrote a summary of Coach Mel’s engineering history and gathered written tributes from each of the kids—a fitting tribute to a coach who has poured eight years of expertise, patience, and passion into her teams. The team inspecting the table before a match. Are all the mission models set up correctly? Gideon with Coach Mel and the Coach/Mentor Award.Next >