Last year, Littletanker joined a Lego League building challenge. He did a pretty dang good job and the leader let us know about F.I.R.S.T. Lego League. Teams of 9-14 year olds are given a 4x8 playing field table with tasks to solve. How do they solve them? The design, build and program a robot out of nothing but Legos. They start the robot and it goes out and does what it's told, hopefully, and gets as many points as possible in 2 and a half minutes.
He started on an established team with kids on the older part of the limit in August. It was a few nights a week at first and they decided to shoot for the whole series. This involved community work, spreading the word about the league. Another part of of the series was finding an issue with something related to the theme of the season and trying to find a solution. There was quite a bit more but I won't go into the weeds on that.
In December of last year, the team competed in the regionals in Hammond. They did well enough to earn an invite to the state finals in the first part of this year. There they finished second. Because of that, they received a invention to both of the major event finals. They chose to go to the Razorback Invitational at the UofA in Fayetteville.
There were 80 teams from around the world. All had done similarly well in their regional and state competitions. (There was a team from Lawrenceburg, IN down in AR too)
They competed 5 times in two days this past week. They were also judged on the other 3 challenges they had accepted. The best of the teams received callbacks to be judged again. There were awards given for each separate challenge and 8 teams picked for the Champions selection, which were judged on everything at once.
My son's team was in the final 8. The closing awards ceremony was this morning. They ended up in 5th place!
I've said that to say this. My son has learned so much this year and is chomping at the bit to get a new team next year. After a few years of this, he can move up to the next level of robot building in highschool. The skills he has learned and will learn are way more than building and programming. Problem solving, teamwork, sales (the kids got sponsors to help cover the cost of the trip), design and much more.
Here is the link to FIRST LEGO LEAGUE. The kids can start as young as kindergarten with some basic Duplo block building.
www.firstlegoleague.org
Here is the link to the highschool league.
www.firstinspires.org
If a young person you know has a knack for anything engineering/building/programming, they should fit right it. If they don't, they can join and just have fun. The link above can help you find a team near by. There were over 32,000 teams this year. Schools, churches, clubs, neighborhoods host these teams. Parents usually coach. You need to know NOTHING about this to get started as a coach/helper. The kids get the ideas and do all of the work. The coaches are there to help point them in the direction to find the answers.
A good number of kids that go through this program through highschool are recruited by engineering colleges/tech schools.
I'm going to brag a bit now. Here is our team.
If you have any questions, send me a message and I'll help if I can.
He started on an established team with kids on the older part of the limit in August. It was a few nights a week at first and they decided to shoot for the whole series. This involved community work, spreading the word about the league. Another part of of the series was finding an issue with something related to the theme of the season and trying to find a solution. There was quite a bit more but I won't go into the weeds on that.
In December of last year, the team competed in the regionals in Hammond. They did well enough to earn an invite to the state finals in the first part of this year. There they finished second. Because of that, they received a invention to both of the major event finals. They chose to go to the Razorback Invitational at the UofA in Fayetteville.
There were 80 teams from around the world. All had done similarly well in their regional and state competitions. (There was a team from Lawrenceburg, IN down in AR too)
They competed 5 times in two days this past week. They were also judged on the other 3 challenges they had accepted. The best of the teams received callbacks to be judged again. There were awards given for each separate challenge and 8 teams picked for the Champions selection, which were judged on everything at once.
My son's team was in the final 8. The closing awards ceremony was this morning. They ended up in 5th place!
I've said that to say this. My son has learned so much this year and is chomping at the bit to get a new team next year. After a few years of this, he can move up to the next level of robot building in highschool. The skills he has learned and will learn are way more than building and programming. Problem solving, teamwork, sales (the kids got sponsors to help cover the cost of the trip), design and much more.
Here is the link to FIRST LEGO LEAGUE. The kids can start as young as kindergarten with some basic Duplo block building.
Home Page | FIRST LEGO League
FIRST LEGO League introduces science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to children ages 4-16 through fun, exciting hands-on learning. Participants gain real-world problem-solving experiences through a guided, global robotics program, helping today’s students and teachers build a better...
Here is the link to the highschool league.
FIRST Tech Challenge
FIRST Tech Challenge students learn to think like engineers. Teams design, build, and program robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. Robots are built from a reusable platform, powered by Android technology, and can be coded using a variety of levels of Java-based programming.
If a young person you know has a knack for anything engineering/building/programming, they should fit right it. If they don't, they can join and just have fun. The link above can help you find a team near by. There were over 32,000 teams this year. Schools, churches, clubs, neighborhoods host these teams. Parents usually coach. You need to know NOTHING about this to get started as a coach/helper. The kids get the ideas and do all of the work. The coaches are there to help point them in the direction to find the answers.
A good number of kids that go through this program through highschool are recruited by engineering colleges/tech schools.
I'm going to brag a bit now. Here is our team.
If you have any questions, send me a message and I'll help if I can.
I’m going to have to look into this for him, Lego is his biggest hobby, he will spend hours building stuff.
