FLL 2009-2010 Open House/Registration

This past Saturday (9/26/2009), the Forest Hills Lego Club had its first open house/registration and successfully registered 14 kids (between the age of 9-11) for the 2009-2010 First Lego League season. The kids will be assigned into two teams:

• Team 1 - Yasmeen, Olivia, Sharon, Rachel, Henry, James, Andrew, Victor. (8 kids avg age 10-11)
• Team 2 - Feras, Brian, Patrick, Marshall, Michael, Jeffrey (6 kids avg age 8-9)

Robotic Game
As soon as the kids saw the Lego kits, they dived in and started to build the game models for the field table. The kids worked in teams and collaborated nicely, helping each other finding the parts, and figuring out mistakes that were buried inside the models. They quickly learned how to identify the Lego parts, read the instruction diagrams, and construct the models in complex 3D geometry.

With the models completed, we are all set to start constructing the robot next week, and hopefully we will get started with some basic programming as well.

Research Project
The FLL tournament consists of two parts, the Robot Game and the Research Project. We are very lucky to have Dr. Lisa Brody to lead our research project portion, where the kids will explore and research about this year's challenge of "Smart Move".
They will need to do the following:

• Define their community, and various transportation modes in their community.
• Select one transportation mode and further research it by searching the web, taking surveys, talking to specialist, experts in that field, taking field trips etc.
  
• Propose an innovative solution to the problem
• Share the solution with their community.
• Present the entire project in 5 minutes at the tournament
  

Team spirit
The Core value of FLL is "Gracious Professionalism". It is more about what you learn through the whole FLL experience than just winning the tournament. The kids will learn critical thinking through programming, apply math and physics through the lego building, practice reading, writing and presentation skills through the research project. and most importantly they will learn how to share, collaborate and work as a team.
We will be picking a team name, team logo and T-shirt design, come up with a team cheers.
There will be job titles assigned to the kids. Each kid will have a chance to pick a job that they love and further develop their leadership skill.

Our next meeting will be Saturday, October 3, 2009 at the Roumie Residence.

Coach Iffat

www.foresthillslego.com