FLL Team Startup

The LW and I are coaching a First Lego League (FLL) team this fall.  We're affiliating the team with our daughter's Girl Scout Troop and will be combining the two at meetings.  Last week, this year's challenge was released and since we are newly formed, we're behind.  A bit of luck fell in our lap though when we realized that our daughter's middle school Industrial Arts class fields two teams of 7th/8th graders.  The class instructor is great and will be a solid mentor for the new team.

There are tons of information about FLL on their website and others, but that seems to be the one of the biggest problems as a new coach.  Finding information is really simple.  Finding useful information is rather time consuming.

Here's the link to the 2016 FLL Animal Allies Challenge.  First thing for new people:  Open each one of the links on that page in a new tab in your browser and save the Challenge Guide as a PDF on the computer that you'll use for organizing stuff.  By the third or fourth time you run in circles trying to find something, you may just break down and create a master link list like I did.

The team has their Animal Allies homework to do for this week.  They are to work on the questions in the Challenge Guide that begin on page 6.  They'll identify 1-3 animal interactions and we'll discuss problems with each during the next meeting.

My homework is trying to get funds together to get the challenge board designed/built, registration paid, EV3 kit purchased, a toolbox/organizer purchased, and begin fundraising grant work that'll keep the team outfitted and humming along.