challenges with running the session with 5 kids and one kit

[Fang Deng]

Hi FLL communities, 

We are a first-time team for FLL explore this season and we have 5 kids between 7 to 10.

I wonder if anyone has experience running a successful session with 5 or more kids, with 1 spike essential kit and 1 season-specific lego set? (like the Underearthed Explore set for this year)

For example, in Session 2, the kids are supposed to build bag 1 to 5 together. In practice, I feel it's gonna be quite challenging for 5 kids to build together, as the building instruction is not designed to be worked on in parallel. What would other kids be doing if one kid is building? How do you ensure each kid can get an equal chance to participate?

Any recommendations would be appreciated!

Thank you,

Fang

[Wayne Pan]

Hello,

We have 6 7-year old boys in our team.  We split them into two teams and had one build the rover, which is relatively fast, while the other team started on the excavation site.  When the rover team finished, they joined the excavation site team.  They each took turns building one step.  The next builder would look for his parts for the next steps while the builder for the current step was building.  The other team members could also help the builder find parts.  It went relatively well.  But we also had some parents stick around (4 adults altogether) so it was a little less chaos with their parent in the session.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Wayne

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[Nikhil Jain]

I have 3 kids in the team and in session 2 it was very hard to divide the building part. This age kids really want to just build Legos so with 5 it could be really challenging. I did ask one kid to be the part finder and asked other one to play with Spike Kit in the interim.  

On Sun, Sep 28, 2025 at 8:14 PM Fang Deng <dengf...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Shishir Mehrotra]

My two cents - at that age, groups of more than 4 are very difficult. TBH, our best luck was when we had teams of 2 or 3. 

If you have the luxury, I would suggest buying another hub kit and letting a group build a second (identical) base robot so they can iterate in parallel. They can even compete to solve similar tasks. 

Shishir Mehrotra |

shi...@alum.mit.edu |

650-248-2483

Sent via Superhuman

On Sun, Sep 28, 2025 at 8:56 PM, Wayne Pan <wtp9...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

We have 6 7-year old boys in our team.  We split them into two teams and had one build the rover, which is relatively fast, while the other team started on the excavation site.  When the rover team finished, they joined the excavation site team.  They each took turns building one step.  The next builder would look for his parts for the next steps while the builder for the current step was building.  The other team members could also help the builder find parts.  It went relatively well.  But we also had some parents stick around (4 adults altogether) so it was a little less chaos with their parent in the session.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Wayne

On Sun, Sep 28, 2025 at 8:14 PM Fang Deng <dengfang07@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi FLL communities, 

We are a first-time team for FLL explore this season and we have 5 kids between 7 to 10.

I wonder if anyone has experience running a successful session with 5 or more kids, with 1 spike essential kit and 1 season-specific lego set? (like the Underearthed Explore set for this year)

For example, in Session 2, the kids are supposed to build bag 1 to 5 together. In practice, I feel it's gonna be quite challenging for 5 kids to build together, as the building instruction is not designed to be worked on in parallel. What would other kids be doing if one kid is building? How do you ensure each kid can get an equal chance to participate?

Any recommendations would be appreciated!

Thank you,

Fang

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[Chitra Gulabrani]

yes agreed with everything that's been said. 

We have 4 kids on our team, and one essential and one prime kit plus one more prime hub. The constant limitation is the hub. And also managing 4 kids with two adults is challenging, so we actively divide them into two groups of two each with their own computer set up, which works out. Takes tons of planning between the coaches before the session to ensure it's not chaotic.  

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 2:28 PM 'Shishir Mehrotra' via NorCal FLL Explore Community <norca...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

My two cents - at that age, groups of more than 4 are very difficult. TBH, our best luck was when we had teams of 2 or 3. 

If you have the luxury, I would suggest buying another hub kit and letting a group build a second (identical) base robot so they can iterate in parallel. They can even compete to solve similar tasks. 

Shishir Mehrotra |

shi...@alum.mit.edu |

650-248-2483

Sent via Superhuman

On Sun, Sep 28, 2025 at 8:56 PM, Wayne Pan <wtp9...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

We have 6 7-year old boys in our team.  We split them into two teams and had one build the rover, which is relatively fast, while the other team started on the excavation site.  When the rover team finished, they joined the excavation site team.  They each took turns building one step.  The next builder would look for his parts for the next steps while the builder for the current step was building.  The other team members could also help the builder find parts.  It went relatively well.  But we also had some parents stick around (4 adults altogether) so it was a little less chaos with their parent in the session.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Wayne

On Sun, Sep 28, 2025 at 8:14 PM Fang Deng <dengf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi FLL communities, 

We are a first-time team for FLL explore this season and we have 5 kids between 7 to 10.

I wonder if anyone has experience running a successful session with 5 or more kids, with 1 spike essential kit and 1 season-specific lego set? (like the Underearthed Explore set for this year)

For example, in Session 2, the kids are supposed to build bag 1 to 5 together. In practice, I feel it's gonna be quite challenging for 5 kids to build together, as the building instruction is not designed to be worked on in parallel. What would other kids be doing if one kid is building? How do you ensure each kid can get an equal chance to participate?

Any recommendations would be appreciated!

Thank you,

Fang

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[Sung Park]

I am a rookie coach, and I have 6 kids in 2nd grade with another rookie coach. It's tough, especially since I am not in a profession of handling kids. 

I have two Spike Essentials and one season set. I keep the session for 1 hour, and it's hard to keep them focused, especially in the late afternoon.

I have divided them into two groups and assigned two different activities (one group building the season kit, while the other group building the spike kit). I intentionally separated close friends, and it seems to work the best, but I would say lower your expectations. Doing one session in two separate meetings of 1 hour each, and not hitting every bullet item.  I have a catch-up meeting once to revisit things I have missed from other sessions. At the end of the day, kids are having fun with LEGO and learning where to place fart sound in their code.

Good luck

[Reena Vijay Patel]

Hi all, 

I have an Explore team of 6, and we also did the same exact thing as Wayne suggested for session 2, which has kids building the radar and the excavation models. We also have two adults to help facilitate each activity if we break into two groups.  Another thing is to discuss and practice the different team roles. This is also where team norms are really important. We had our teams brainstorm some agreements that were important to them in working with each other. We end our sessions with a team huddle where we reflect on how we did with our group norms and where we might improve next time. 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/norcalflljr/CAKjpCeuvCDcvpctsFY-cWN1qV24abgsOikPGhWw0U%3Df%3DbjHGBw%40mail.gmail.com.