Has anyone started a Junior First Lego team?

[Kayaking Mom]

I would love some information. What did it cost? How did it work? etc. etc. Anything would be great. I'd like to start a team in the fall with our local HS group, but I want to have a tiny clue of what I am getting in to before I hit "send" on the email. THANKS!

[KAR120C]

It was a lot of fun, but a bit on the "intense" side, especially at the competition. It's not just playing with Legos, and unfortunately it can be hard to explain that to parents whose kids really like playing with Legos but don't really want to do a project with Legos. We ended up with a great team though, all 8 year old boys and all enthusiastic and hard working. We met weekly from September until Thanksgiving, because our state competition was 12/1. I think there's quite a lot of variation in the dates for the competitions -- I have a friend in PA whose DS did FLL last year and had more than one thing to show up at... I don't know if JFLL works the same way there but it would be worth asking someone local.

The price was something like $120 for the kit and the registration, and we had four families involved so it was only $30 each. We sold the kit to another parent who wanted to use it for a team this year, so we divvied up the earnings from that rather than trying to figure out how to "share" the kit. This year we're doing a full-fledged FLL team with Mindstorms, and two families have already purchased the robot kit and we will be "borrowing" it for the team.

From our experience and what I've seen with others, the JFLL team works really well with four kids, and not as well with more or fewer. The FLL team needs more (looks like 8 would be perfect, but I don't have experience myself), but the JFLL is a much more contained project. The competition is a little goofy... in JFLL everyone gets an award of some kind. But the whole setup was kind of stressful, with getting there early, setting up, parading into the arena, listening to the introductions and whatnot (very VERY loud PA system)... The kids were fine... I wanted to crawl under a table and stick my fingers in my ears. Also the organization before our event was a little spotty, but of course that was only my problem -- the kids didn't have to deal with that. :)

It was definitely an exercise in teamwork. Kind of like Odyssey of the Mind or Destination Imagination that way. But I like it better than OM and DI myself, just because it's more focused.

Hope this helps! I'd be happy to answer any specific questions too!