Yesterday the Newton LigerBots high-school robotics team hosted the Eastern Massachusetts FIRST Lego League (FLL) Championship featuring 48 FLL teams that qualified for the event from across eastern Massachusetts, including three Newton-based teams:  the Day Dragons, the Roaming Rovers, and the Hawks. In addition to competing in LEGO robot matches, the teams presented their projects on this year’s outer-space theme, Into Orbit. The Day Dragons won the Inspiration Award and the Roaming Rovers won the Teamwork Award. This was a great showing for Newton team in a very competitive event. The event also featured 10 FLL Jr. teams presenting their projects on this year’s FLL Jr. outer-space based theme, Mission Moon.

Accompanying the tournament was a maker fair featuring hands-on activities from the Brandeis Maker Lab, Students for a Greener World, Newton Free Library, Empow Studios, Hatch, Johnson String Instruments, Kevin Osborn, the Massachusetts National Guard, and Code Ninjas, as well as LigerBots STEAM activities: 3D printing, button making, paper airplanes, origami, slime, brush bots, PB&J Robot, and binary beads. About 70 Newton Girl Scouts attended the maker fair, which served as their 2018 STEAM Workshop. The Girl Scouts earned their STEAM patch by participating in activities sponsored by the Ligerbots and other exhibitors. See more photos here.