This month Leah Delmonico and Riley Fegely have been very busy with their invention “The Bottle Buddy.” On June 7th they flew to Dearborn, Michigan with their teacher Ms. Gardecki and parents to compete in the U.S. Nationals Invention Convention. This year there were a total of 166,000 submissions in the affiliate competitions across the country (including the Pennsylvania Invention Convention that Leah and Riley won Best Prototype in), 336 of those submissions were invited to compete in Nationals at The Henry Ford.
Prior to leaving for the competition the girls needed to create a video that fulfilled the requirements of a seven page rubric. They also needed to submit the log book that they have been working on since December outlining their journey creating The Bottle Buddy using the engineering design process. During the three day competition the girls worked hard on their presentation for the judges, and also were able to view the inventions of students in grades 1-12 from across the country. They spent a lot of time touring the museum & Greenfield Village where Ms. Gardecki quizzed them on a lot of history they learned in S.S. that year (which they passed with flying colors)! It wasn’t all work though – they had a lot of fun meeting past Invention Convention champions, Mystery Science host Jay Flores, and even getting interviewed by PBS! All of their hard work really paid off because they took home the 3rd place award in 5th grade! The girls received an abundance of positive feedback from the judges including this comment:
“This was such an amazing presentation and concept. As a career retailer, I would invest in this in a hot second! The branding, the attention to detail, and the confidence in how you presented the details were among the best I’ve ever seen in 5 years of this. Keep up the great work!”
On June 21st the group headed to the ABC News6 studio in Philadelphia where they were interviewed by Action News reporter Alicia Vitarelli! After a wonderful interview, Alicia was kind enough to give the girls a tour of the building & some history of ABC news. The clip played on the 4:00 news that day, as well as the following morning, and was posted on all of their social media accounts where they received many encouraging comments & praise.
On June 22nd Riley & Leah were interviewed by reporter David Mekeel from Reading Eagle.
The girls are continuing to work this summer with Ms. Gardecki and are currently looking for investors to help them get a patent and mold for their invention.
ABC Action News clip & article
