The First Lego League 2012 Senior Solutions mat, mission model Lego pieces and build instructions arrived in a small box today at our coach’s house.
Katie and Matthew cleaned up the lab so our coach would open the box. An email from FLL had warned coaches to open the box and lay out the mat upon arrival so the wrinkles and creases would relax. The mission mat was folded in the box, so Matthew and Patrick laid out the new mat on our FLL table. Katie will publish a photo of the mat tomorrow. We don’t have enough room to do MoonBots and FLL in our lab so we will use the lab for FLL since the FLL table is there. We will do our MoonBots Phase II project in the spare room next to our FLL lab.
We had planned to wait to build the mission models until the FLL 2012 challenges were announced on August 28th. Seeing the box of bagged Legos calling to us to be built; is like having unopened Christmas presents in the house. Our coach contacted the rest of the team and we now have a meeting and build scheduled for tomorrow. As we build, it will be fun to guess the robot game challenge missions.
First time coach needs answer to question.
In the box the lego pieces come packed together. Does each package represent a certain board mission. I know the students need to put the missions together… how much and how should I unpackage the pieces that would help us the most at this time?
The pieces aren’t bagged according to mission mdoel. Any sorting you can get done before (or during) the model builds is definitely worthwhile to speed things up.
We had five or six people working on model builds (with Patrick doing continuous piece sorting) and it took about three hours to complete them all.
Also, although the robot build and other FLL activities (e.g., project) are definitely limited to team members, I think the mission models can be built by anyone who’s willing to help out. This includes coaches, parents, siblings, friends, etc. I think there’s definitely some benefit to having the team members build the models (more LEGO building experience, greater familiarity with the model, etc.), but if time is a constraint or others want to help out this is definitely a good place to involve them.
Pm
I would warn you against flattening out the mat, although it’s probably too late. Illinois state, despite being one of the biggest state tournaments in the midwest, didn’t bother to tape the mats down last year; I doubt that Illinois, or your local competition officials, will take the time to get the wrinkles out. The wrinkle location is supposed to be “predictable” because of the way the mat came folded up, but there will still be variability.
For the same reasons, shying away from wall following this year would probably be a good idea.
One thing… the Toyminators (our team) are working on the creation of a LEGO vacuum. Using a small cup-shaped piece combined with a piece of pneumatics tubing has allowed us to make progress, but the non-flexibility of the cup piece has made work difficult. (for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a link to the picture of a LEGO satellite dish… the dish is made of the piece http://images.mocpages.com/user_images/17670/1287346864m_SPLASH.jpg)
Anyone got any ideas?
Thanks and good luck!
Anthony T