To the Journal editor:

This truly is the season of generosity in our community and we have never felt the spirit of Christmas more than we do this year. Our students from Aspen Ridge Elementary School worked incredibly hard this year. Their name, Team ASPEN, stands for Aspiring Students in Programming, Engineering, and Natural Curiosity and they truly are. They learned how to design, build and program a robot to complete tasks and challenges. They learned how to work together as a team and completed a water conservation project and presented their idea to a panel of judges.

Their hard work and dedication was recognized at the Houghton Qualifier and they won the Championship Award. They were also one of the teams chosen to represent First Lego League at the downstate competition being held on Jan. 20 in Allendale, Michigan.

Excited and more determined than ever after their victory, the students on the team were set another challenge when they had to seek and gain sponsorships and successfully run a can drive to raise money to pay for the trip downstate. With the local can drive, the students were able to raise just over $500! We want to say thank you to the amazing community support. We were able to raise almost $500 from individuals through our GoFundMe Account. Thank you everyone for your support!

We also had amazing support from local businesses and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the generous businesses who have sponsored our Lego Robotics team this year: Decker Keopp Auto Sales, McDonald’s, Yooper Shirts, Aldo’s Spices, Myer Yamaha LLc, TruNorth Federal Credit Union, Northern Health Chiropractic, Gauthier Insurance, Anytime Fitness, CLIFFS, UP Fabricating, and Jerzi’s 41. Thank you so much for your support!

Christina King

Team ASPEN