Lego League launches minds 'Into Orbit'

My friend Mia and I are in the FIRST Lego League in our school. Lego Leagues are teams of kids between 9 and 16 years old who work on projects that challenge them to think like scientists and engineers.

According to the FIRST Lego League website, this year's theme is Into Orbit. Teams will work on a real-world problem while exploring space. They'll also build, test and program a robot using Lego materials to solve a set of missions.  

Our team meets three days a week during lunch. We have a classroom in our building, the Innovation Lab, where we work on our robots. We discuss and plan what we will design and build for our missions. We also plan how we would protect ourselves and our equipment in space.

This year’s theme was problems in space. Our grade competed in January, but we didn't make it to the finals. I was picked for a competition group that focused on Mission 10: Growing food in space. My job was to create an attachment to get the robot to push an orange bar to a green bar without the robot pushing it too far. If I did that, then I would get 16 points; if I didn't get it to the green bar, I would get no points at all. Even though we didn't win, we did get the Core Value Inspiration award.

Lego League is my favorite thing to do in school at lunch time.

Susan Danzig and Jen Stucchio’s fifth-grade class, Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School, Huntington Station