jens2sons Posted January 26, 2016 Share Posted January 26, 2016 Is there anyone out there that knows how to run a non-competitive Lego league? I have been looking at information on the junior league because I am interested in offering it as a class for my co-op. We don't have any leagues offered for younger students in our state according to the LL website. I am simply looking to offer this as a class and to not compete (at least this year). I am interested if anyone knows how to get a hold of the curriculum and kit without having to join the competitions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCB Posted January 26, 2016 Share Posted January 26, 2016 You can buy a kit on Amazon. My friend and I coach an FTC team, and we compete - we won the Inspire Award at our first qualifier this season - Yippee! My friend also teaches a lego mindstorms class at our co-op. The curriculum is called - "Classroom Activities for the Busy Teacher: NXT 2nd edition" - she got that on Amazon too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arliemaria Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 I was recently looking at the Lego WeDo sets. Those might be for littler kids, but worth looking into for open ended play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirstenhill Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 We are doing Jr. First Lego league this year. If you pay the fee to register a team with Jr. First, you aren't paying for any expos ("competitions" - except they aren't actually competitive). What you are paying for is their coaching materials and the information on the "challenge" for the year. You then buy any kits separately, and would pay any fees separately to if you were able to enter an expo. But, if you wanted their coaches materials and the information on what the challenge for the year is, you could pay to register a team to get those things. Registering a team also gets you the opportunity to buy somewhat discounted "kits" that have the recommended materials and a few unique things packaged together. On the other hand, you could buy some of the Lego Education simple machines kits (we spent a number of weeks just going through those), and make up your own identical sets of blocks for "building challenges" (we did a lot of those, but ended up googling for ou own topics for the mini building challenges since the ones in the coaches book were kind of lame). We are really only spending our last six weeks on our main challenge and building a model based on the challenge. You could even come up with your own main challenge for kids to create a model. The main challenge is pretty broad anyway! One thing I would suggest, if you are doing it as a co-op class, is that you have a way to break your group down into smaller groups of 4-6 kids. When all six kids on our team were present, we found we really needed to break down even further into two groups of three even to do simple machines (we had two simple machines sets), because it is just so hard for multiple kids to build together on the same thing. We are actually down, practically speaking, to only three kids who are building the model to take to the expo (One family dropped out for unknown reasons, one moved away, and my DS6 decided he didn't want to do the expo model and I decided not to fight him on it). Even with only three building a model of a process (recycling computers for precious metals), it is a challenge to help them work together to build one cohesive model and not just three separate things on a big board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirstenhill Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 Here's about what our year looked like (not precisely, since I didn't keep very exact records, but this is the general idea): First couple weeks: Play get-to-know-you games, agree on group rules, brainstorm team name, talk about how we could choose one name (talked about ways we could vote, etc). Drew logos and voted on a logo. Started doing 5 minute building challenges (Like "build something that represents what you like to do in your spare time" After that: More individual building challenges, and then two or three person challenges (things like, build a bridge that can support five pounds of books) Next: several weeks to do Lego simple machines lessons and learn to use the motor. We also started talking about the general challenge topic and brainstorming possible specific topics Finally: about six or seven weeks devoted to narrowing down our topic to something specific, building a model, and making a display. We have our expo in three weeks, so we are almost done with the season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FriedClams Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 My son took the Landry Academy EV3 class and it was EXCELLENT. He's sharp, good with programming, computer minded... and he was thoroughly challenged. It's a fabulous class for any kid wanting to get deeper into the Lego robotics world. Highly recommend it!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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