Monday, November 21, 2016

Lego League Jr.

Our Model
    I helped start William's FIRST Lego League Jr Team at his school. We started in September this year and it was quite the journey. Lego League Jr. is the beginning level for robotics for FIRST. This program is designed to be for student in kindergarten through third grade. They have a new theme every year and this year was "Creature Craze". In this challenge the students had to learn about bees and then select a creature that live int he same habitat as a bee. Our team selected the skunk. I am not sure what drove that idea but we moved ahead just the same. The challenge also required us to make at least one part of our model move.

    We were given a Lego kit that included a bee and the hive it lives in. We had to include them in our model. Everything else came from the imaginations of the students. It was hard to find all of the Lego's in the right color for the model. It was especially hard to find black and white for the skunk. We did manage to find enough to make a skunk. It was designed to be coming coming out of the ground. He did not want to get stung by the bee s he is waiting for the bee to go away. The model also had trees and flowers and water. We did a lot of research about skunks and learned many new facts. We got to share these ideas with the school where William attends. We had an after school expo and the next day had three more expos for different grade levels. It was really exciting for me as well as the students to see the level of engagement from the students at every level. 


The Display
Our Team
    We chose to be part of the local expo. Teams from all around our area came together to show off what they had done. It gave our students the chance to see other models and to talk to other students that were accomplishing the same task. We had to me a show me poster and display our model. Once the area was set up judges came around to talk to the students about what they had learned and what they had built. I was very proud of all of our students for how well they participated in this event. It was the first time that William has been part of a team for robotics. He was very excited. I was glad to see how well each student took to each area of the challenge. I was also very excited to see everyone of them program our model and enjoy it. I would say that this year was a huge success.

I look forward to William moving up to Lego League next year. 

I am proud of you,

Your Loving Dad

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