I’ve recently began volunteering at my local community center. The kids there seem real bright but they seem to lack an interest for anything that has to do with school. I really want to get them interested into LEGO and show them how fun it can be but I don’t know how! 
So if anyone has any ideas, please share them with me. Thanx.:o
Do you have any of the technic or mindstorm? if you do, take them up to the center and show the kids what they can do.
Do you have a RX? If you do, build a small robot and demonstrate some of the robot’s capabilities. Show them what they can do with the RX and mindstorms.
Or show some videos from last year’s FLL game.
Ok thanx I’ll do that and maybe I can even get some of the other volunteers to help out. This has been a real help. I guess I’ll let you guys know how it goes. =0)
I used to have my own Mindstorm kit that I bought after seeing a teacher demo off the schools kit. I liked it so much that I donated my kit after I no longer had a need to use it myself. I small working demostration will make the kids interested really fast.
There are about 50 kids that go in every day, of those kids there are only about six or so that I think might be interested. I am going to go and show them some FLL videos and if they seem attracted to it I’m going to go out and find everything I need to get them started. I’m hoping that I won’t have any trouble. Hopefully the kids do find it “cool” so that they want to do it themselves.:o
If you need some good videos of FLL there are some of Mindstorms Mayhem and the Flying Geeks at Mindstorms Mayhem’s website.
Let us know how it goes.
These videos are really good. Thanks for sharing. I will make sure to show them to the kids and I’ll tell you what they thought. Congrats to your team.
The Carl Hayden Falcon Robotics team recently hosted the 4th annual FLL tournament and I was one of the volunteers. It was fantastic to see how into it these kids were so I thought that it would be great if the kids at the community center got a chance to experience it too. I’m sure that a lot of these kids have heard of Lego but they’re the kinds of kids that think that if they get involved with anything that is somewhat scholastic they might be classified as nerds. I am hoping to break through that and show them how fun it is to be a “nerd”.
Star Wars Legos worked for me…:rolleyes:
See me when we get back to school. Or better yet see you at the Kickoff on Jan 6th at Brophy High School at 7am!! We can help you with your Lego stuff at the community center!
Later Mary!
The best way I’ve seen is not through videos or normal legos, but rather through robots. Make a line follower, or set up the FLL field and have a bot that competed last year play the game live. Videos will not draw as much interest as you think; the field will be a lot of fun. Have a laptop with the code for that bot loaded up as there is always one or two kids that are interested in “how does it go”–recruit them at all costs; they may be the future of your team 5-6 years down the line.
If you need help with any of this, I can try, just ask
JBot