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maybe the kids can figure out a way

I think the http://firstlegoleague.org/ robotics for younger kids is a great program. I have helped judge the local event for the past 5 years and have seen first hand the enthusiasm and creativity in the kids. I think that the younger you can get them interested science/technology/building/creating the better!

I signed one of my kids up for FLL ( http://www.firstlegoleague.org/ ), and it's worked well. The cost was something like $70 for one season. They use Mindstorms.

Pros:
- Kids develop teamwork skills as well as robotics skills
- More social for the kids than just working at home
- Each season kids are provided with some reasonable motivating problems. Even though the kids won't really solve them with Lego Mindstorms, it could give some kids a sense of the real good they can do if they pursue S&T careers.

Cons:
- Have to drive kids to the meeting every week, sometimes twice/week as end-of-year competition gets close.
- Kids can't totally choose their own problems, and won't have access to the equipment except during meeting times (probably).

There are some excellent add-on program to the middle school curriculum such as First Lego League. And it needs parents to volunteer after school to coach the kids and provide judges for the various competition levels, state, regional, national and world (in Sweden). http://www.firstlegoleague.org/

I'd use the Lego Mindstorms robotics set, with an NXT processor. That way, the programming results are more tangible and you can solve just about any problem likely to come up in a programming contest with it. For some fun, check out the First Lego League challenges. http://www.firstlegoleague.org/

http://firstlegoleague.org/community/fll/welcome.aspx

We had gen 1 of this which was great and are planning to get the NxT version. For schools and clubs there is also a challenge competition at local, state and national levels. http://firstlegoleague.org/community/HomePage.aspx

The LEGO Mindstorms beloved to so many Slashdotters are used by 9-14 year olds (basically grades 4-8) in the FIRST LEGO League International, which has participants in almost 2 dozen countries.

And since last year, within the US they've been piloting a "Junior FIRST LEGO League" for ages 6-9. I just found out about it, and my daughter's in that age range... bet she'll be happy to hear. :)

These First Lego leaguge compititions arn't new, they've been going on for the past 3 years. I'm currently 16 but I was just young enough to participate in the compition for the first two years.

The league website is http://www.firstlegoleague.org/

For those of you that are interested in how the compition works. Each team competes for a maximum amount of points achieved by completeing various missions in an enclosed arena withen a set amount of time. Teams build and program Lego Mindstorms robots to get as many points as possible. Though the main goal is to achieve the highest score, the true winner is picked by the innovation of the robot design. The compitition itself is very fun and challenging, and it teaches the kids a lot about design and troubleshooting.

Its definately a great experiance for everyone, even if you don't win (like my team).

See here (January 2004) and here (March 2004)

There was quite a kafuffle shortly after Christmas of last year when LEGO announced their shift in direction. Quite a large number of people were very concerned that LEGO would be dropping Mindstorms. Flurries of posts on LEGO discussion lists and even letters directly to LEGO were filled with remarks much to the effect of "What?!?!? Why is LEGO doing this?" LEGO issued the January press release above to abate those concerns. Also mentioned above is a March release in which they restate the Mindstorms is one of their core products and they will *NOT* be dropping it.

First Lego League is also very dependant on Mindstorms, and I don't think they're going away anytime soon.

6. ALLOWABLE SOFTWARE The Robot must be programmed using LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotics Invention System or RoboLab software (any version).

6. ALLOWABLE SOFTWARE The Robot must be programmed using LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotics Invention System or RoboLab software (any version).

I participate in an event called FIRST LEGO League. Last year our team won First Place Nationally (U.S.). We'll be going to Nationals this year (one team from each state competion will be) in April, and signup for next year is planned to start May 3rd.

One of our coaches is at FIRST's headquarters with several people from LEGO from Thursday to today, and (at least as of several hours ago), no talk of disbanding Mindstorms has gone on.

I'm sure that because FIRST has so many ties to LEGO, they would have been told ahead of time, so something seems amiss.

Just a few thoughts,
Coolhelperguy

P.S. Dean Kamen (the guy who made the Segway) is the founder of FIRST, to give some idea of size, and the fact that it's not a fly-by-night orginization.

URL included this time:
First Lego League

This was going to be my suggestion too. The one disadvantage here is price - at $250 it is a bit of a barrier to entry, but as you mentioned you get all of the benefits of learning programming plus you get to write programs that actually interacxt with the real world usign light sensors, touch sensors, rotation sensors, etc. Don't know if you are aware of it, but the FIRST Lego League is an international program designed to introduce kids ages 9-14 to programming and engineering using Mindstorms. very cool organization and a terrific educational opportunity.

Take your Mindstorms set to a local school, gather a group of geeks-in-training, and join the First Lego League. The challenges are complex and fun, and it sounds like the programming information and tips in the book would lead to some really great robots.

Best of all, you will be helping kids see that computers can be used for more than just video games and IM.

I helped First test this out, but now it seems to have gone international. First Lego League International . It's pretty cool - here though the challanges are known before when building your robot, and you are giving a Lego Mindstorms kit and can use your own components. It's mainly for late elementry or jr.high school - but it can be mentered by anyone. It was a LOT of fun when I did it except the other team destroeyd our robot...