The atmosphere at the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) Culdrose base in Helston was electric. A massively enthusiastic bunch of 450 primary school students competed in the FLL Regional Final. The event brought the past to life through archaeology and provided students the opportunity to show off their budding engineering minds. They created and coded Lego robotics to solve different missions on an innovation table.
Among the participants, Tamsin Melville from Helston and George Thorpe from South West were excited to showcase what they had learned through the competition. They were totally engaged in fun and eye-opening hands-on activities. This newfound enthusiasm led to the realization that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) were critical ingredients for success.
Felicity Blight, secretary at Porthleven School—one of the participating schools—drew attention to the educational purpose of the event. She noted that it profoundly extends the students’ STEM learning experiences. It cultivates vital skills such as coding and collaboration too.
“It really builds on their STEM learning, they get to do a lot of coding and a lot of teamwork.” – Felicity Blight
Elowyn, one of the students, was grateful for the experience and summed up her feelings perfectly by saying that it was interesting and fun.
“It’s a great experience for kids our age because you’re learning and still having fun.” – Elowyn
No one forgot the struggles in advance of the competition. George Slater, who guided the teams as an NCJFCJ mentor, praised the devotion and effort based on their work shown. Sure, the robots created by the students didn’t always work as intended, but their grit really shined through. He promoted the idea of failure through adversity as an educational opportunity.
“The robots are not perfect, they will go wrong and they do go wrong, but the children get through that and persevere.” – George Slater
Beyond the competition’s impressive results, Slater praised the event for encouraging interest in engineering among young participants. He noted how these kinds of programs help connect the next generation of naval engineers to exciting, purposeful work and develop their coding skills along the way.
“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