Hello, I’ve been a FRC lead coach for 14 seasons now, and my daughter is now going into 4th grade and I have her and some friends interested in forming a lego robotics team. Explore goes through 4th grade, but Challenge starts at 4th grade. I guess I’m wondering on any advice on how to decide what one to pursue. Or any resources to help make that difference more clear, or first-hand experiences with 4th graders in either program.
Thank you so much
When I’m helping prospective coaches pick which side of this split to fall on, there’s a few questions to ask. I’m going to use the word “you” several times here - I’m really referring to both you, the adult coach, and the student participants.
What are you trying to get from doing this?
If you’re just looking for an activity to do, and only want it to run for a predetermined number of weeks, Explore is great. Do the lessons included, wrap up, and be done.
If you’re looking for something that more closely resembles FTC or FRC, in that you can theoretically infinitely refine your robot and innovation project, Challenge is the way to go. There are core lessons to be taught, but you can always learn more advanced programming and do more serious research.
What do you find fun?
If you’re a nerd (like me), the idea of programming your very own robot to do missions is super fun. As a kid, I’ve bought in to the idea that I want to do this thing, and I don’t need to be pursuaded to participate. Challenge can be daunting, and Explore can serve as a great intro in one year, before they move into Challenge.
Do you plan on doing this again next year?
If you’re planning on doing this for several years, and you want to research and planning you do to carry over, Challenge will allow you to do that. Explore is to Challenge as Challenge is to FTC.
Will losing destroy you?
As a 4th grader, you’re probably going to lose to an 8th grader - I’m just being honest here. I’ve seen the opposite happen, but it’s rare. If you can’t stomach the idea of losing, starting with Explore can give you time to mature, but still work as a team to do a thing.
Personally, if there isn’t a reason you can’t do Challenge, I’d go for it. It’s a ton of fun, your experience as an FRC coach will have some relevance, and the skills the kids learn will carry over better in to subsequent years (both in Challenge and FTC/FRC).
This past year we had our elementary schools start a FLL Explore team at 4th and 5th grade level, and the feedback that we got is that they wanted to actually compete against other teams, so this year we will have FLL Challenge teams at that level. A few of the kids that I talked to felt like FLLE was boring for them
If you don’t know how FLLE works, its basically a pre-planned set of lessons and at the end there is an Expo. Every team gets an award. It is worth pointing out that FLLE comes with engineering journals and lessons that will guide not only them but also you as the coach through the process of the season, whereas FLLC doesn’t have as many resources afaik.
I would recommend asking her if she cares about competing and seeing how much effort and time she has.
Personally, I started doing FLLC in 5th grade and I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of things you have to do. I also did FLLE back when it was called FLL jr, but I don’t remember much about that and it was structured differently.
Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I love the questions to pose to the kids to see what route they (and their parents) would like to take.
FIRST LEGO League Challenge now has a Team Meeting Guide as well. IMO it’s the best resource ever put together by FIRST. It significantly lowers the barriers faced by new mentors/coaches in the program. Here’s a link to a sample version of the guide.
What are the expectations for time/effort?
Explore is pretty contained, 12ish sessions, not a ton of research or work (depending on what the coaches/kids make of it).
Challenge is a lot more time and effort with the robot AND the project and then the presentations for judging.
I second recommending Challenge if this is something you plan on doing for more than one year.
I also second the Team Meeting Guide for Challenge. I also recommend the FLL Challenge Share and Learn Facebook group - it’s pretty active and a great resource.
(I’m president of a club of 15 Explore and 17 Challenge teams this coming season and have coached 3 years each of Explore and Challenge, my daughter is going into 6th grade and has done 3 years of Explore and this will be her 4th year of Challenge).
As someone who has participated in FLL Challenge for 5 years(and has really enjoyed the experience), as well as mentored two teams, I’d like to agree with all of the commenters here.
FLL Challenge is more competition-oriented, while FLL Explore is more, well, exploratory. In FLL Challenge, the teams have both an Innovation Project and a Robot Design element. I like to think of this as: Innovation Project is like a science fair project, and Robot Design is on-field matches, as well as a pre-practiced presentation that the kids present to the judges. There is another part, Core Values, where the teams are judged throughout the Competition Day(s, in some cases) on their gracious professionalism and team spirit.
Assuming that you, or whoever is helping to mentor/coach the teams are new to FLL, both FLLC and FLLE are well-structured, with “lesson plans”. FLLC has a broader scope and the lesson plans can seem not as helpful, compared to the FLLE guide books(that FIRST provides). Conversely, FLL Challenge has a lot more resources to help both the kids and mentors learn(in this case, again I assume simultaneously). Because it has a larger scope, I can recommend some resources like:
Built into the SPIKE PRIME app, there are also some lessons, which will be helpful to any team, no matter the skill level.
I can’t speak firsthand about FLL Explore, but I wanted to put some of what I know out there. No matter which you choose, there are important lessons to learn from both, and I wish you all the best!
P.S. FLL kickoff is August 1st(wanted to add that in there just in case 
)
edit: I just realized that the last commenter has very similar things to what i have written here, but I’ll still go ahead and post it haha
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