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LEGO Inspiration: 41194 Noctura’s Tower & the Earth Fox Rescue

amomentmaker

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In LEGO Inspiration today, we will show you what we found interesting in LEGO Elves set number 41194 Noctura’s Tower & the Earth Fox Rescue.

This is one of the medium-sized LEGO Elves sets, but even though it’s “geared” (haha) more for girls it has a lot of important things to consider using in your FLL attachments or robot. We really like that sets like these help kids (that might not even be old enough yet for FLL) to consider different ways to have gears, chains, rotating beams, and other moving parts bring function to their play sets. Maybe these sets will get all kids, girls and boys, interested in robotics!

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#FIRSTLikeAGirl Women in STEM Build Event

amomentmaker

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Some of our team had the awesome opportunity to attend the Houston area #FIRSTLikeAGirl Women in STEM Build Event at Space Center Houston today. We had some great talks about what it means to be allies for each other in STEM. We also had fun helping to encourage all the rookie FIRST girls as they start their own great robotics journeys with their teams. It was also great to be inspired by FIRST teams older than us, as well as females in engineering.

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Gears: Types of Gears

amomentmaker

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Gears are everywhere, from seemingly simple toys to as complex things as cars. We think that it is amazing that LEGO Technic has incorporated so many gears into their sets to create functioning machines or robots to be used in FLL (FIRST LEGO League). In addition, many other LEGO themes such as City and Friends have used gears for many of their special functions. In this article, we will show you the types of gears as well as their uses.

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LEGO Inspiration: 42062 Container Yard Part 2

amomentmaker

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In LEGO Inspiration today, we will continue showing you what we found interesting in LEGO Technic set number 42062 Container Yard.

This is one of the medium-sized LEGO Technic sets, but even though it’s small it has lots of cool gearing and use of connectors. It is a 2-in-1 set, so it also has available instructions to build a container straddle-carrier, but for this article we will deal with the main instructions for the 2 container yard vehicles. Of these two vehicles, we will focus on the blue and white one in this article as “part 2” about this set (see “part 1” for orange vehicle).

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LEGO Inspiration: 42062 Container Yard Part 1

amomentmaker2 Comments

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In LEGO Inspiration today, we will show you what we found interesting in LEGO Technic set number 42062 Container Yard.

This is one of the medium-sized LEGO Technic sets, but even though it’s small it has lots of cool gearing and use of connecters. It is a 2-in-1 set, so it also has available instructions to build a container straddle-carrier, but for this article we will deal with the main instructions for the 2 container yard vehicles. Of these two vehicles, we will focus on the orange one in this article as “part 1” about this set. We have found many neat and inspiring things about this vehicle.

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City Shaper Release and Upcoming Video

amomentmaker

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We are really excited for the 2019-2020 season in FIRST LEGO League! The theme this year is City Shaper! FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is such a great program for kids ages 9-14 years old (age restrictions are different in other parts of the world, so check for your region). Get involved if you can as a team member or coach! Even if you do not have time to be fully involved, you can still volunteer or attend the many tournaments across the world!!!

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Core Values at the Tournament

amomentmaker

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When we went to the FIRST LEGO League regional championship tournament in our area, we were impressed by all of the examples of Core Values that we saw from the teams! The FIRST Core Values are a list of guidelines of how teams should act. They promote teamwork and “Coopertition” both within and between teams, as well as encouraging everyone to always treat others with “Gracious Professionalism.” This year FIRST made a list of consolidated Core Values across its different levels. In today’s article, we would like to share with you some examples of these Core Values being displayed at our tournament.

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Countdown on Hold…

amomentmaker

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Due to a facilities problem, our regional championship was canceled at the last minute. We want to thank FIRST and all the volunteers who had already spent countless hours planning and setting everything up for the tournament before the cancellation needed to occur.

We were of course very saddened to hear the news of the tournament being postponed. We sincerely hope that the championship will be able to be successfully rescheduled this year, so that all the teams will have an opportunity to share all that they have learned, accomplished, and worked so hard on this year.

Please excuse us from our regular blog post entries as we continue to prepare for our regional championship.

We know many FLL regions have already had their championships, but we want to wish good luck to teams who haven’t yet finished their competitions! Also, we want to wish good luck to all teams who have already moved on to preparing for a World Festival or another invitational!

LEGO Inspiration: 42057 Ultralight Helicopter

amomentmaker1 Comment

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In LEGO Inspiration today, we will show you what we found interesting in LEGO Technic set number 42057 Ultralight Helicopter.

Our squishy mango friend insisted on taking the wheel for our opening picture! This article covers only one of the two models that can be built with this set. This is one of the smaller LEGO Technic sets, but perhaps the neatest thing about it is the fact that it is so compact and simplistic but capable of doing so much. There are great examples of transverse gearing, gear trains, and pivot points controlling steering!

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