The Programme
FIRST® LEGO® League shows young people what it means to be an engineer and work with STEM skills and subjects, but focuses on practical, hand-on learning, so they are doing, not watching. FIRST® LEGO® League Discover is designed for 4-6 year-olds and develops children’s STEM skills from an early age. Delivered in school by the class teacher, children work in groups of four to explore a real-world theme with an exclusive LEGO® Discover model. Using this model as a starting point, they design and build new models of their own with LEGO® STEAM Park bricks. Working through a series of tasks and challenges, the programme finishes with a celebration event to recognise the children’s achievements.
As they work, they develop valuable habits of learning, such as persisting with tasks and applying previous knowledge to new situations. Throughout their experience, teams operate under the FIRST® LEGO® League core values, celebrating discovery and teamwork, all while having fun! Skills are also developed at home with the Discover More set: a take-home resource consisting of two sets of DUPLO® Six Bricks to continue learning at home with parents and carers.
Children get the chance to showcase their learning journey at the end of the programme with a Celebration Event, which involves building, a special challenge and talking about what they have learnt with parents and other adults. Their hard work and perseverance are celebrated with a certificate and lots of high fives!
What you can do
Teachers are fully supported with comprehensive resources available to download on the IET Teacher Resources webpage, including image banks to use within sessions, session and training videos, and curriculum grids.
You can sign up here, and if you're in a location with funding, complete the 30 Day Challenge to get grant funding to cover all the costs associated with delivering the programme in your school. The team at Learnit (Ireland) or the IET (UK) will support you through the process.