This is what happens when you have too many Legos and too much free time

[video caption="Lego Machine"]http://youtu.be/dtcUqR2VADk[/video]

We got Arlo a Lego Mindstorm kit for his seventh birthday and he took right to it, programming away the winter nights. He was already an established lego master - now he's planning on being a robot engineer.

Gotta give credit to Lego, they produce some fantastic stuff.

Imagine the insanely reduced amount of time that young boys would have to get in trouble if they built that.

. . . . and all that they would learn too.

Don't mean to hijack. Check out this one:

Kylie's school participated in the First Lego League this year for the first time. They had 71 kids participate out of an enrollment just shy of 300. I think they had ten teams. Kylie had a good time.

It was billed as Lego robotics which is not exactly what it was, at least at the Jr level. This year's theme was food safety. The Junior FLL (grades 1-3) did some basic animated Lego displays to highlight safe food handling for the food they picked.

At the FLL (grades 4-8) level, they had build a Lego vehicle to execute mission in a predefined arena. They had to build and program the vehicle to go to specific areas of the course and pick things up and move them some where else. One of the teams from Kylie's school qualified at the regional competition and went to the state competition.

I've also seen a Lego 3D printer.