The story so far...

Back in January a small group of home educators from the Manchester area decided to have a go at becoming a First Lego League team.

A bit of background.

The First lego Leage (FLL) is an international competition, this year run by the IET, which aims to give children between the ages of 9 and 16 a chance to design, build and programme a robot, using Lego Mindstorm technology. This robot then competes against other teams to win the competition.

The team has been meeting since February and there have been a number of challenges for us as a team even before the event officially starts on the 1st of September. Initially we had 18 members when the maximum allowed on a team is 10, however time has sorted this one out for us as gradually people have realised this challenge is not for them.

Perhaps our biggest challenge to date has been fund raising. As we are not a school or club based group we had no funds, so the team has raised all the money to buy the Lego Mindstorms kit and save up for the entry fee to the competition. This we have done through a combination of sponsored events, selling things we have made and doing jobs for people. This was the sponsored bike ride down the Monsal trail in Derbyshire.

When we were not fund raising we were working on the skills we thought we might need for the competition. Team building, design, computer programming, working with Lego and different materials to solve problems. This part is best shown in pictures and though the record is not complete it gives some idea of what we have been up to.

We made vehicles  to solve the problem of getting Fred across the desert, but each time they solved the problem it changed so the vehicle had to be adapted to meet the new needs of the challenge.

 

 

and then we presented our vehicles and their adaptations to each other

We made towers from newspapers to hold potatoes...

Towers from triangles of garden canes...

Structural sculptures at the Whitworth art gallery...

and a theme park from Lego (will post about this session shortly)

 

We have also done loads of team building games and visited Techniquest in Wrexham for some help in working the mindstorm robots.

And now we are a registered team, and the robot is bought and on its way, and the challenge is soon to be issued. We are hoping this blog will give parents some idea of what we are doing, give the children a chance to show off their designing skills and to let other home educators in Manchester know what we are up to.