FIRST LEGO League Team Resources

• A team consists of up to ten kids ages 9-14. The names have to be submitted about four weeks before the competition.

• A team should meet at least once a week for about 1 1/2 hour. The coach and at least one parent should be present for every meeting. The season lasts from August until the end of November. Competitions will be in Dec./Jan.

• The competition rules are announced in early September.

• The first two meeting at least are spent building the models in the Field Setup Kit.

• The next meetings can be used to familiarize the kids with the robot and the NXT-G programming environment, which was designed for ten year olds. The software comes with 14 video step-by-step tutorials.

• The group should keep an Engineering Notebook with digital photos of meetings, rough drawings, plans, skit ideas, skit outline, skit script etc.

• Before the competition, add tab pages and organize for judging. Give it to the Skit Judges and bring it with you to other judges.

• If you only have one robot, it can be hard to keep ten kids busy. Use LEGO building activities from my resource page or purchase some LEGO kits. Kids can also make just the wheeled part of the robot and use it for planning on the mat surface.

• For LEGO construction, I suggest a group of three. One builds two pages from the instructions, one hands the builder the parts, the third waits. After building two pages, they rotate.