Utah FIRST LEGO League Championship......................

So Jax's Lego League competed in the first annual Lego League Championship this yesterday at the University of Utah.  This meant that I had to get up at 4:30A.M. on a Saturday morning to be down to the University of Utah by 8:00 a.m. What I don't do to support my grandchildren.......:)

At the beginning of the school year Jax joined the Lego League. It is the first time that they have had it. To get in he had to write an essay about why he wanted to be in the league.  Then he had to be at the school EVERY Saturday morning from 8 until 11:30. 

This league is sponsored by Lego and everything they use to build their robot must be Lego items. They design and build a robot then they have to program it to do certain tasks.  They also learn how to research and work together as a team and other assigned tasks.  It is a great program and Jax has really enjoyed it.

Here is Jax in the 'pit' waiting for things to begin.......

They had a parade of teams to start out the event. Here is Jax with his team, The Atomic Inventing Mindbending Scientific8ors...or AIMS.

The competition consisted of several events. 
Core Values-where the teams are observed as the complete a hands on teamwork activity, participate in an interview with judges and are observed throughout the competition.
Robot Designs
Project-where their teams identify an existing problem in the scientific specialty related to the Challenge, and find a solution to that problem.
Robot Games Match- this is where they put their robots through specific tasks and receive points for completing the tasks in a given amount of time.  Each team had three matches.

The Matches were the only things we were allowed to watch. They didn't want the parents to be in the other events as to not influence how the kids responded to their other tasks.

Here is Jax's team in their first match..I think Jax was a little nervous.....

 Here is a closeup of their robot.....

Note the referee in the funny hat.  All the refs wore crazy hats.  The teams all deigned their own team t-shirts and outfits.  It was very colorful and crazy.  Only two team members at a time were allowed at the game table to run the robot.  In the last match Jax had his chance to control the robot.

There were 56 teams from elementary and junior high schools that came to compete.  It went until 5 that afternoon.  They did a great job of keeping everything running on time and smoothly. At 4 they handed out the trophies, unfortunately Jax's team did not receive one. Everyone did get a medallion.  These are a smart bunch of kids.  Jax would talk about things and I was amazed at what he knew.  I have a few more pictures on my FB page it you want to look.