Lego Land

I've seen a couple of posts on various blogs about Legos recently.  Legos have become big time around here, although, there doesn't seem to be as much at home assembly as I'd like.  Jackson used to be far more into making Lego Star Wars battle ships.  

I love how the directions are written, so similar to Ikea instructions.  I am confident that I will be able to hand down my responsibilities as the Ikea-furniture-assembler to him someday.  This is a thought that I adore.

Fast forward to last spring when there was talk at the elementary school about starting a Lego Club.  I will just say that excitement abounded.  In August, however, when said club was supposed to start and numerous e-mails went out stating that there had not been any coaching volunteers, my excitement wained.  I was unable to talk Barrington into taking on the team and so, it was left to me.  Six seven year old boys, their Legos...and me.  (There ended up being other coaches who also felt the guilt that I felt, so we did have each other.)

The thing is, Lego Club (Jr. First Lego League)  is really all about robotics.  I can fake that I know about Legos, but there is no faking my inexperience with robots.  This year's focus was biomedical engineering...seriously?  Anyway, after eight meetings with some very hyper boys (mine being the hyper-est) we figured it out and headed to our first "event" on Saturday.

I cannot describe the craziness of this event.  There were loads of people and they were excited.  My boys seemed like deer caught in headlights and were obviously overwhelmed by the noise and motion that was all around them.

And, can I just mention the judges?  These ladies and gentleman were serious.  They were all either engineers or worked in the medical field.  One could tell they had been doing this for a long time.

When the kids get older (4th grade), they begin to build a robot that they have to program to make it's way through an obstacle course that they also have to build.  You can see these girls in the background getting ready for their timed robot challenge.  This went on for a full day, really.

Each of the teams brings something to give out to all who come and see their projects.  One team even made a robot to give out their candy:

This is the robot that the high school team made, just for fun:

Anyway, back to our team - the Lego Sharks.  We had fun coming up with a name and a logo.  The boys chose to focus on orthopedic casts and slings as their biomedical engineering choice.  They built a Lego model of a hospital after conducting their research on casts and slings including having a doctor show them how to apply and remove a cast.  (I got to be the model.)  They also wore slings for 24 hours to see how it would feel.  

All in all, we had a good time.  One of the boys asked me if I was going to be the coach next year.  I asked him why and he said that he wanted me to be his coach again.  How sweet!  I may do it again next year, but I think I'll have to hand over the reins to another after that when the robot building and programing begin.

Our project:

The boys with their medals:

The best part about the whole thing was having something special that Jackson and I got to do together.  I loved our 7-11 stops on the way and just hanging out with him, we don't get to do enough of that.