First Lego League Regional Finals in the Netherlands

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What is First Lego League?

First Lego League is a super cool competition with Lego #robots! You can build and #program a robot to move, spin, pick up things, and do all kinds of awesome tricks. It’s like making a Lego creation come to life!

There are three important parts in the First Lego League:

1. Core Values

Core Values are all about #teamwork and being kind to others. Even though we compete, we should help each other and be nice to all the teams. It’s not just about winning—it’s about learning and having fun together!

2. Robot Match

In the robot match, teams program their robot to complete different missions on a big table. If your robot does the missions well, you get points! The team with the most points can go to the national finals! It’s exciting to watch the robots do their tasks and see how many points they get.

3. Innovation Project

For the innovation project, teams have to pick a real-life problem and come up with a smart solution. Then, they present their idea to the judges. It’s all about using #creativity and thinking outside the box!

The best part of First Lego League? You get to have fun, work with friends, and learn how to program robots!

The Ride to the Competition

It was finally the big day! The regional finals of the First Lego League were happening today! I was so excited, I could hardly sit still. My team, The Kraken, was ready to compete!

We had to travel to The Museon in The Hague. The Museon is a museum with lots of cool stuff about #art, animals, plants, and science. It took us 15 minutes to get there, which felt like forever because I was so excited!

When we arrived, I saw one of my school friends. But guess what? He was in a different team! That was funny because now we were competitors!

The Teams from My School

There were three teams from my school:

• The Kraken (that’s my team!)
• Sea Spirit
• Coral Explorers

We were all hoping to do well and maybe even win something!

What Happened at the Competition?

At the #competition, we got three chances to do our robot missions. Before the real rounds, we could also practice to make sure everything was working right.

The first practice round was not great. We had 8 missions planned, but 2 of them did not work. Most of our missions didn’t work—except mine! But then, during the real match, my mission suddenly did not work. What?! That was so weird! In the end, we only got 135 points.

The second practice round was better! Everything worked fine. But when we did our real match, something went wrong again. My program was supposed to make the robot move in a straight line, but instead, it acted crazy! It turned out our robot had drift. Drift is when a robot doesn’t move exactly how you programmed it. Because of that, we only got 105 points.

During the third practice round, my program still didn’t work. I started panicking! But my teammates told me to calm down, and we tried again. When we went to the real match for the last time… my mission finally worked! Yay! We got 145 points!

What Place Did We Get?

I’m not exactly sure, but I think we finished in 7th place out of 30 teams. But guess what? One of the teams from our school got 2nd place! That means they had a 50% chance to go to the national finals!

There was also another final on Sunday, and the team that got 2nd place there also had a 50% chance to go to the national finals. Everyone was watching nervously. The robots were rolling across the tables, completing their missions while the teams cheered. Would our school’s team make it? After an intense final match, our school’s team got chosen! We all jumped up and cheered so loudly that people probably heard us in the next room!

We Won a Prize!

Even though we didn’t win the competition, we still got a #prize! We won 1st place for robot #design! Our robot was kind of simple—it was just a box with an arm that could move up and down. But I guess the judges liked it! We also got a cool Lego medal as a prize!

We were also one of the only teams that used EV3, while most other teams used Spike Prime.

What is EV3?

EV3 is a type of Lego robot. Most teams used Spike Prime instead, because Spike Prime is newer and doesn’t have problems like drift. But we still did a great job with EV3, and maybe that’s why we won the robot design prize!

The Best Part!

Even though we didn’t win first place, the whole experience was amazing! We got to build and program a robot, work as a team, and have a lot of #fun. Plus, we made new friends and learned so much about coding and problem-solving. And of course, getting a medal was awesome!

I can’t wait for the next competition! Maybe next time, we’ll make it to the national finals!

I hope you liked reading about our First Lego League adventure! It was such an exciting day, and I can’t wait for the next competition!

See you next time! 😊

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A special thank you to @Acidyo ❤️ Because of your support we were able to get super cool T-Shirts.
Also a big thank you to @enrique89 for a great T-Shirt Design 🙌

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