.......................EARLY Flash.......................

Thank You for Protecting and Restoring the World's Reefs..... Spring 2008 Challenge Unveiled!

EARLY Exploration Kit Grants Now Available to jumpstart your EARLY program!

Engineering And Robotics Learned Young (EARLY) is a program that exposes our youth to engineering.  EARLY provides 7 to 12 year olds the opportunity to participate in a robotics competition every fall and spring. 

The competition robots are built from LEGO® Simple Machines kits which have a comprehensive curriculum available for easy implementation into the classroom.  The combination of curriculum and competition allows teachers to have all their students complete some of the Simple Machines activities, which are approximately 45 minutes each, and then invite those students that are interested to participate on the EARLY team. 

EARLY team members have a bright future with the opportunity to participate, throughout their education careers, in various robotics competitions such as FIRST LEGO® League, Botball, BEST, and the FIRST Robotics Competition.  For those students that choose not to participate on the EARLY team, they will still have been introduced to hands-on engineering and gained an appreciation for the challenges and goals that the EARLY team will face.

Each season, EARLY teams are given a new mission that they complete by building a robot from three LEGO® Simple Machines kits.  Each kit contains a motor along with a battery powered remote allowing robots to have three motors.  The EARLY playing field is constructed from plywood, 2x4s, some paint, and a little bit of sweat.  The mission models are built from one LEGO® Simple Machines kit.  You can get the EARLY Mission for this season on our current Season page and past seasons are located on our Missions page.

The cost to start a team (3 LEGO® Simple Machines kits for the robot, 1 LEGO Simple Machines kit for the mission models along with the building materials for the field) is approximately $500.  The cost to sustain a team is very low because the construction materials remain constant from season to season.  Although there are city-wide competitions such as the one in Houston, teams are encouraged to hold neighborhood EARLY tournaments so teams do not have to travel far and can participate in several events during a season.  A Neighborhood EARLY Tournament can be as simple as a couple of teams getting together after school one day to compete on a team’s practice field.  Since the missions are typically 2 minutes long, a two team event with each team having multiple attempts can easily be completed within an hour.

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