"FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a global program created to get kids excited about science and technology. Geared for ages 9-14 (up to 16 outside of the U.S. and Canada), FLL utilizes theme-based Challenges to engage kids in research, problem solving, and engineering. The cornerstones of the program are its Core Values, which emphasize contributions of others, friendly sportsmanship, learning, and community involvement."
Each year has its own theme (This years theme was called Climate Connections.)and there are four major components of FLL that they boys work on. There is Teamwork, Technical (how you design your robot), Challenge table (where the robot needs to perform tasks/missions for points) and Research Presentation/Project. We first met at the end of August/beginning of September to decide to do this.
The boys were all excited about working at the table and getting the robot to do the tasks. They were NOT excited about doing research. Climate was a hard topic for them. They decided (after much debate) to do honeybees and how they are affected by the NH Climate and what is happening to them. They met with a local beekeeper and found out a lot about bees. They also met with the State Climatologist.
Fast forward to November 14th. The date of the regional competition. We are all excited. It was finally here. The boys had perfected their presentation, figured out how to get the robot to do 10 or so missions on the table out of 20 and really came together as a team. No matter what happened we were doing this again next year!!
It was a SUPER long day for all the boys (and this coach as I was SO excited I woke up at 1AM that morning:-) As a rookie team they blew EVERYONE away when they were the first team to get 100 points on the table portion!! We could not believe it...we were SO surprised! they ended up in 4th place on the table out of 16 teams. Then the closing ceremonies came..."For project presentation...the award for the team that truly was thinking out of the box...team 5899 Out of the Box!!!" We were shocked again! So much for not knowing what we are doing!! This ment they were off to the State Competition on Dec. 6th. Words can not tell you how surprised we all were to be going to States. The boys were full of ideas and ready to get more missions done on the table. They did a bit more work on their presentation and even got into the local paper.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081206/NEWS01/812060329&template=single
Then, off to Nashua for the State Competition!There were 51 teams in all. We were gone from the house for 12 hours and we were extremely tired when we returned home. BUT the boys (and I) learned SO much by being in the company of all these teams. They watched how other built their robots, they saw how some teams were doing so many missions they were getting 200-300 points on the table. In the end they were awarded 2nd place for their project presentation and I could NOT have been more proud of them. They were they little rookie team that could. We are now going to look into sponsors for next year and we borrowed most of our equipment this year including the robot and a laptop.
I can't wait for next year!!
