The First Lego League Regional Final welcomed some 450 talented and lively primary school students to the SembCorp base at Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) Culdrose at Helston. These young engineers were excited to prove their abilities and ingenuity. Here’s a taste of what this year’s competition—focusing on archaeology—produced. During the competition, participants designed and built Lego robots to accomplish different missions on a game table.
Students from over 25 local schools participated in this exciting event. Its goal was to enhance their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education. Over the course of the competition, the teams showed amazing talent with some top-notch coding and teamwork to tackle problems together. Collaboration was the heartbeat of the event. Hands-on learning Students enthusiastically cheered one another on as they mastered the programming hurdles of their robots and checked each task off their lists.
Felicity Blight, school secretary at Porthleven School, said she was “thrilled” that the event had such educational benefits. She underscored the spirit of coding and collaboration that shaped the educators’ creativity to best develop the students’ talents.
“It really builds on their STEM learning, they get to do a lot of coding and a lot of teamwork.” – Felicity Blight
Among the students taking part was Elowyn, who came away with high praise for the unique, hands-on experience. She noted that it was the only event where you could learn so much and have this much fun at the same time.
“It’s a great experience for kids our age because you’re learning and still having fun.” – Elowyn
During the event, George Thorpe, from the South West region, shared on the overcoming power of persistence when dealing with adversity that is highly relevant to those times. His fellow instructor and friend, George Slater, said that students’ robots had their fair share of bugs and often fell short in execution. What really knocked his socks off was the amazing resilience the kids displayed.
“The robots are not perfect, they will go wrong and they do go wrong, but the children get through that and persevere.” – George Slater
Slater discussed the event’s role in developing the next generation of engineering talent. He thanked NFTA for “supporting and encouraging” the zeal for invention he saw in all the young participants.
“It’s really great to see the potential naval engineers of the future having loads of fun, getting engaged in this sort of activity and doing some really impressive coding.” – George Slater