The Rhode Island FIRST LEGO League Challenge is a team-based opportunity for groups of children to engage in creating a robot from LEGO robot kits, develop a solution to a real world problem and learn team building techniques. The program includes a competition that caps the season of learning.

Rhode Island Students of the Future, a nonprofit organization, has managed the FIRST LEGO League program in Rhode Island for 20 years with support from National Grid and the Textron Charitable Trust. Due to the pandemic, the FIRST LEGO League season has been shifted from the fall to the spring, with the culminating events scheduled for March 2020. Registration is currently open for teams that want to participate in the season.

“The FIRST LEGO League program has been popular in Rhode Island elementary and middle schools for 20 years, but we’ve always had strong participation from community, neighborhood and home-based teams as well.” said Sheli Silveria, community and outreach manager. “This year, our community and home based teams are finding creative socially distanced and virtual ways to work on their robot and find solutions to the research project, while most of the school-based teams are unable to participate in the program.”

Aquidneck Island Robotics coach Kim Lesieur said, “We are preparing for competition entirely virtually. Our team has six students who are sharing three robots and passing it to each other. We are working on our research project and presentations and are still trying to come up with fun team building activities that we can do online.”

According to the FIRSTinspires.org website, there are now three age levels for the LEGO robot level.

FIRST LEGO League Challenge involves “teams of students ages 9-16 who engage in research, problem solving, coding, and engineering – building and programming a LEGO robot that navigates the missions of a robot game. Teams also participate in a research project to identify and solve a relevant real-world problem.”

In FIRST LEGO League Explore, teams of students ages 6-10 “focus on the fundamentals of engineering as they explore real-world problems, learn to design and code, and create unique solutions made with LEGO bricks and powered by LEGO Education WeDo 2.0.”

The youngest division was created so curious youth can participate with FIRST LEGO League Discover. Covering “grades PreK-Grade 1, which is for children ages 4-6, this playful introductory STEM program ignites their natural curiosity and builds their habits of learning with hands-on activities in the classroom and at home using LEGO Duplo blocks.”

Parents and guardians are able to create and coach a home team with two to 10 students. Your team can be your children or a small group from the community. Your time invested to inspire

STEM education practices during remote learning.

All teams are assembled by coaches. Rhode Island Students of the Future does not place students on teams.

For more information on FIRST LEGO League or Rhode Island Students of the Future, visit risf.net/first-lego-league.html or contact sheli.silveria@risf.net.