FIRST LEGO LEAGUE - open practice

by Robin

This has become a part of my world, like it or not. Simon Peter loves engineering, robots and learning to love programming the robot.


This weekend, they held an open practice for anybody in the state that was wanting to work on their "missions" and ask for help by anybody else who seemed to know what they were doing.

This brave school opened their cafeteria up to 30 teams. We were one of them.





Simon Peter & his teammates started the first week of August, working on a logo first. Then, getting familiar with the NXT robots. He was thrilled the day the team picked his logo to go on the shifts.


I'm sure all five boys dreamed lego pieces & how to make the robot perform the way they wanted.


There were weeks of frustration.

And then there were weeks of breakthroughs & teaching one another.

Still there is much more hard work to do before the actual competition in late November. Measurements to be made and numbers to be calculated. Consistency to be achieved.

Here is an open table from this weekend with multiple teams standing around.

Here is Simon Peter working some kinks out of his program that wasn't being consistent on the open table.

One of our younger boys was having his own issues. A fellow team member with an extra year under his belt helped him out.

Another senior member worked on a new idea that he gleened from another team on another table.

They also were giving seminars for teams wanting to learn more.

We are very fortunate to have great coaches with experience.

Part of this weekend was to build friendships & experience. It was good for their character-building to be able to determine who was helping & who was full of bologna.

Here is a funny pic the boys staged.

Time back at the team table.

We came near the end of open practice time. Andrew wasn't sure what to do with himself. He found a little niche' of cleaning off wheels.

He's Assistant Wheel Cleaner.

Here are the boys acting out gracious professionalism. FLL is big on gracious professionalism. Teams are awarded bonus points for helping other teams or acting kind to their own teammates.