Challenges for building practice?

[bethmartin]

I think the thing that my team has the hardest time with is the actual building with the technics. They know what they want to make, but have a hard time putting it together. If they have written instructions, they are great at following them, but I'd like to develop their free-building abilities, you know?

So I was wondering if there were any lesson plans/challenges that I could give to them for some practice? There are all these great lego pieces, but they just don't get how to use them to create what they want.

Thanks!

[timdavid]

Yes, building with technics can be a challenge for many kids. Many of them are more used to building with the "normal" LEGO bricks.

I haven't seen a good lesson plan for introducing building concepts. I would suggest you poke around the Team Resource page provided by FLL and see if you can find something appropriate:

http://firstlegoleague.org/challenge...ces#Robot-Game

Other suggestions I have are

1. Kids do learn fairly well by example. Have them build some of the sample projects from nxtprograms.com, and they will pick up some useful techniques.
2. Take a look at the PDF of building ideas from the works of ISOGAWA Yoshihito. Or obtain one or more of his books. They have many small examples of useful building techniques.
3. I think a simple, but useful challenge would be to simply have the kids build the outlines of squares using different parts. There are lots of technics parts that can be use to make 90 degree angle connections, and this would provide a variety of examples. I'll see if I can post some pictures of different possibilities in a day or so.
4. Remember that you can incorporate non-technics LEGO parts in your building. It may not be ideal for stability or sturdy structures, but mixed building can still be fun and useful.

[dna1990]

I see this too. They usually 'cobble' together some odd mix of parts to get their basic shape and operation in place. I let them then leave that in place as a 'model' and challenge the rest of the team to make it lighter/stronger/fewer parts/etc.

And time is a key, but do let them free-build. Some folks have contraints with parts and have to contorl the inventory closely, but find some time in the schedules to let them 'doodle'. Always on a small scale. Little cars/tank/cannons seem to be the boy outlets. My guys are facinated with rotating gun turrets.

I think it simply takes time. And connecting Technic pieces together in ways we as adults don't always think are 90 degree perfect. My guys ended up making a ferris wheel that I thought for sure would be a disaster. But they made it all work out with some crazy angles and connections I would not have thought to try.

We also do a team building/communication excerice where one kid takes about 15-20 random pieces and creates a random sculpture looking piece. They then hand that exact same list of parts to the other person. And without 'seeing' the final sculpture, have to be told verbally how to construct it. I started out making the sculptures, but found they like doing it better - and it gives one more outlet of bulding experimentation.

[Jeff Bartig]

I think building following some plans is a good way to pick up some good building skills for kids that haven't work much with Technics parts in the past.

I second the suggestion of ISOGAWA Yoshihito's Tora no Maki e-book. You can download the PDF from his web site. He asks for $10 if you keep it. It has also been printed as a three volume book set. Also check out the rest of his web site for many cool projects he has made. He is quite the Lego artist.

Dave Parker's NXTPrograms.com web site also has many Lego NXT project plans with well commented programs. I like these a lot better than what I've found in most published books. They are not overly complicated projects. Have the kids build some and try out the included programs. You can learn a lot by spending time examining how someone else created something.

[bethmartin]

That Yoshihito book is amazing!!! Thanks for that suggestion, I'm totally going to get that set for my group.