There is some exciting news from Rock Springs! A new club called First Lego League (FLL) is now in full swing at the elementary school. Fourth and fifth graders have the opportunity to participate in this exciting opportunity, and along the way, they get to learn many hard skills such as coding, robotics, and the engineer design process as well as soft skills such as teamwork and sportsmanship.
The purpose of the club is to teach the students about different applications of robotics as well as real life skills. The teacher sponsor, Ms. Sharon Muller, believes this organization is extremely beneficial to children. She says the kids are learning traits that many companies and businesses seek in adults. “What we are doing in STEM is stressing the four Cs: creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. All four are practiced in Lego League.” Ms. Muller also notes that the kids are having a great time and are truly engaged in the robot.
Krish Saxena, a fifth grader at Rock Springs Elementary, is a part of the team. He talked about the mission his team is working on: hydrodynamics! His team is responsible for creating a robot that carries “water” from a “cloud,” all made out of Lego pieces. “We code the robot using a program Lego Mindstorms,” he says. They change different values regarding the robot, such as the angle of rotation, and test the robot to see if it works. Krish says it’s an incredibly fun experience, and he loves working with his friends in order to complete the tasks at hand!
With their final competition last Saturday, their season is now over. However, this is definitely not the end of the history of FLL at Rock Springs. The kids are excited to start again next year! Go Rock Springs Rockets!
