LEGOs Challenge Young Hands and Minds

Intense debates over scientific procedure, frowns of concentration, a whoop of triumph as a motor starts up — an advanced engineering seminar? No, it’s the Junior FIRST Lego League, and the engineers are 6- through 9-year-olds from Farmington elementary schools.

The league is part of the Farmington EXCL program and is connected with FHS’s robotics team; six of the high-schoolers actually mentor the junior leaguers.

“Lego League matches up perfectly with the EXCL’s missions and goals,” says Vince La Fontan, Director of Farmington Schools’ Extended Care Program. “We encourage critical thinking, problem solving, and innovation, and Legos provide problems to be solved in a creative way – the kids might not even know how much they’re learning.”

Learning, indeed. At a recent meeting at West Woods School, 10 teams of students, coached by parent volunteers, attacked the project head-on. This year’s challenge is “Body Forward – How Engineering Meets Medicine,” and each team of four to six students must brainstorm, research, and build a model related somehow to medical science. And in keeping with the robotics approach, part of each model must be motorized.

Using special Lego kits – upgraded from classic Legos by the addition of large wheels, gears and motors – the kids are creating a variety of Lego hospitals, medical equipment, and emergency vehicles. First-grader Mason Barto of West District School proudly showed off the snowmobile he built “to rescue a sick person if the roads aren’t plowed.” His teammate, West District second-grader Ellie Diver, demonstrated how a tiny plastic patient could get a “cat scan” on the machine they built of Legos. Pride of accomplishment was in the air: one young fellow said “I think we pretty much nailed it.”

The Lego League is coordinated by Amanda Minutillo, Senior Group Leader of EXCL at East Farms Elementary School. “Lego League is one of EXCL’s many enrichment programs. We started at West District three years ago, and it’s become so popular that now we include all four elementary schools,” Minutillo says.

Coach Heather Diver is impressed by her team’s progress. “It’s amazing to see the students building on what they learned last year.”

“The league gets girls interested in science earlier than they ordinarily would,” says coach Lisa Nollman, whose daughter Emma is in her third year of Lego League.

In April, the teams will present their finished models at an “Invention Convention” at Farmington High School, where judges will rule on originality, teamwork, and creativity, and each student will receive a certificate for participating. Minutillo notes that the challenge is not a competition, because the junior version is so new to the schools.  She hopes that in the near future Farmington will be ready to compete with teams from other area schools, but for now, she says, “fun and learning are more important than competing.”