Who is With us?!
School is starting back, which means the next thing on our calendar is the big one:
the fall FIRST LEGO League season kicks off Sunday, August 23!!!!
REGISTER BY FRIDAY (that is, let Brenton know you’re wanting to participate— brenton@steamhouse.)
This season’s FLL theme is BIOGLOW — biodiversity, ecosystems, and how technology and research can help us understand and protect natural habitats. Each crew designs and builds an autonomous LEGO robot for the tabletop tournament, and researches a real problem connected to the theme to present to judges. The robot work is the medium; the crew is the point.
The Details
Who — Kids in grades 4–7. No robotics experience needed; kids who’ve done a season before mentor the newer ones. That’s part of how crews work.
When — Sundays, 3–5pm, late August through early November. The regional qualifier is Saturday, November 21 — the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Crews finishing in the top 25% advance to state in early December.
How it’s organized — Crews of three to five kids, usually two to four crews at once, all under the Goatrunners umbrella. Crews build their own robots and compete on their own; the team is the bigger thing they belong to.
Cost — $120 per kid, sliding scale. Pay less if that’s what you can do, pay more if you want to cover part of another family’s spot. No kid is turned away for cost.
Commitment — The season is short and Sundays are the working day. Once crews form, each one needs its kids showing up consistently.
First job of the season: building the Robot Game field
Once you’re in, connect with Coach B to get (you come by, or we’ll deliver!) a couple missions to build for the robot game!
We’ve split the set into eight build packets.
Useful extras
- Element Overview — every part in the set, pictured. This is what you use when you think a piece is missing.
- Prepack guide — how the bags map to the builds.
- Robot Game Missions video — watch what each model actually does before you build it. Worth ten minutes.
- Field Setup video — where everything goes on the mat once it’s built.
- Robot Game Rulebook — the mission descriptions and scoring, in full.
- Prefer picture-only instructions? The nonverbal versions of all thirteen books are on the LEGO Education season materials page — which is also where to go if any link above stops working.
And one favor: if you know a family with a kid in grades 4–7 who’d light up at this — send them this post. Most of our crews are built exactly that way.