I came across First Lego League sometime last fall. The older group does some cool robotics, but I found out they also have a younger group called FLL Jr. for kids 6 and up. I kept seeing it and looked into it to see if there were any local teams. Surprisingly, there weren't any listed in my area. My son had expressed an interest in learning how to invent things. FLL Jr seemed like a great way for him to learn the process of inventing and have a weekly constructive play date with a few friends.
It all started to come together so I became a FLL Jr Coach. I organized a small team of 3 boys and a girl. I bought the kits and received the curriculum for the year's challenge. Every year has a challenge theme and this year it was about natural disasters. I was super organized and we met for 2 hours a week - half the class was learning about asteroids (the disaster they picked) and half was building with Legos. We learned about simple machines and some things we built were motorized.
We did a few experiments. One of my favorites was when I, off-the-cuff, turned the catapults we built with Legos into a game about predicting trajectory. That tied very nicely into finding asteroids. We also did another physics project by making craters in flour with objects of different sizes and weights. The "asteroids" we used were a tangerine, an apple, a rock, and a couple other small objects. This, of course, demonstrated how asteroids can cause damage, and everyone enjoyed dropping the "asteroids" to make the craters.
It was really fun and I learned a lot too. It was a little tricky balancing the kids that were all over the map in development. I got a taste of what a first grade teacher would experience. A couple kids were just learning to read and write, which was a challenge I wasn't expecting. It all worked out fine. I got to practice public speaking (one of my weakest skills). I also had to project my voice (not yell) a lot because 4 six year olds sure can get rowdy!
I really liked teaching, but my son was not so happy about sharing his mom for 2 hours. He had a meltdown in class nearly every week. It also went on for way too many weeks because of the holidays and then Dex having a weird stomach flu added another couple of weeks to the holiday break. We just finished our project, but I might start something else up soon. I need a small break, but I have too much fun doing science experiments. I'll definitely be doing this again next year.
