Young Minds use Legos to show how bees affect the world around them

Fox Valley Robotics/Batavia Robotics, Fermilab and FIRST bring its fifth annual FIRST LEGO League Jr season to the Fox Valley Area with the 2017 "Creature Craze" open house from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, at Fermilab, off Pine Street in Batavia. This year's open house features 16 teams of as many as six children per team, plus team coaches and mentors, involved with this year's topic "Creature Craze."

FIRST LEGO League Jr. teams are tasked with researching animals and bees in a habitat and their effect on each other. In the 2016-17 Creature Craze Challenge, more than 40,000 children ages 6 to 10 look at bees in a whole new way. The grade-schoolers will exhibit projects and posters demonstrating their research about bees and the impact that they have on the habitat and other animals around them. The open house is intended to give students an opportunity to present their research and celebrate the hard work they've done as a team, while at the same time, highlighting how bees are an important part of the environment. It is not a competition, so all the teams are celebrated.

"Creature Craze" gives 6- to 10-year-olds a hands-on, real world experience allowing them to use their imaginations and creativity in combination with science and technology, and lets them experience first-hand the very real and exhilarating struggles and successes that the world faces.

The FLLJr program and challenge are designed by the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) as part of the FIRST Challenges. The FIRST Lego League Jr (FLLJr) is for children 6 to 10 years old to introduce them to basic design skills and a hands-on approach to science and technology through the familiarity and fun of LEGO building.

It will be 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, in the atrium of the main building, followed by the awards ceremony from 3 to 4 p.m. Admission is free and the event will show kids of all ages what robotics is about. To learn more, visit www.foxvalleyrobotics.com/flljrevent.

FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is an international organization which creates robotics programs for kids of all ages; www.usfirst.org.

Batavia Robotics is a nonprofit organization which has been around the area since 2002. In 2007 to offer the program and incorporate kids from multiple communities, the name of Fox Valley Robotics was added. Today over two hundred kids participate in three divisions of robotics. The LegoWolves Division is for the 1st-3rd graders, the LegoDogs Division is for 4th-8thgrades, and the Coyotes Division is for 8th-12th graders. For information about the organization and the summer programs, visit bataviarobotics.com or foxvalleyrobotics.com.