FIRST LEGO League Challenge is created for children and youth aged between 9 and 16 years old and aims to inspire youth through four competition parts to experiment and develop critical thinking, coding and design skills through hands-on STEM learning and robotics. Children in teams, together with a mentor, spend months preparing, constructing and then programming a robot, planning an efficient sequence of Robot Game missions and designing an Innovative Project. Apart from Robot Game, children demonstrate acquired knowledge and skills in conversation with judges, presenting an Innovation Project – project whose goal is to come up with ways to improve the environment and community and use given resources in a better way. Other important parts of the project are Robot Design – how and why a robot is designed in a certain way, as well as Core Values – an important part of the entire competition which carries a vital message which is the basis of the FIRST LEGO League Program.

Teams from different cities of Serbia and teams from Bosnia and Herzegovina participate in the competition in Serbia. The winning teams from the competition in Serbia go to Slovenia for the regional competition, while the teams that manage to advance further, go to the world competition.

Core Values ​​are the cornerstones of the program and they are the ones that differentiate FIRST LEGO League from other programs of its kind. Judges during the competition observe how the participants incorporated Core Values in everything they do, throughout the preparation and also during the competition. By asking questions, the judges determine how the children cooperate in the team, how they behave towards their members and other teams. During preparations and competitions, children develop the following values: Teamwork, Fun, Impact, Innovation, Inclusion, Discovery.

The Robot Game represents the most interesting part of the competition for participants. Children, during the preparation, build and code their robot, design which missions the robot will complete and in what order. Apart from having great fun, children learn about teamwork, coding and easier adoption of new ideas and their improvement. In three matches, the robot has 2.30 minutes in each match to complete as many missions as possible and thus the team collects as many points as possible.

Children have a task to present to judges their Innovative Project related to that season’s topic in the best possible way. In that way, participants develop communication, presentation and public speaking skills. The judges look at whether the team defined and researched the problem in a right way, how they developed the idea, how they tested and shared the ideas, and whether they presented the solution clearly enough.

To participate in the Challenge program, you will need a Robot Set (LEGO Education SPIKE™ Prime, MINDSTORMS^® EV3 or Inventor Set), a current Challenge Set (consists of challenge mat, mission models, building instructions, current challenge guide, materials and other documentation) and table.

• All equipment must be LEGO
• Non-electrical LEGO pieces are allowed from any set
• Electrical pieces are allowed from the mentioned Robot Sets (LEGO Education SPIKE™ Prime, MINDSTORMS^® EV3, MINDSTORMS^® Inventor Set, but equivalents such as NXT i RCX are also allowed)
• Robot equipment allows a maximum of 1 controller, a maximum of 4 motors, an unlimited number of sensors (pressure sensor, colour sensor, gyroscope, distance sensor or ultrasonic sensor), LEGO wires, controller battery or six AA batteries and one SD card