When was the last time you thought about making something creative using LEGO? Yeah, it’s been a while for us as well but we’ve lost that childlike spark, perhaps. But there are actual young people who are doing some impressive thing with the building blocks of imagination and they’re going to be in action on 5 and 6 December at the First LEGO League (FLL) finals that are being held at the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Johannesburg.

Groups of young people between the ages of 9 and 16 will be pitted against each other in two different challenges, called the Robot and Project Challenges.

Using LEGO kits the young teams will have to “…design, build, program and test unique robots that must perform a series of tasks, or missions in under 2.5 minutes through multiple iterations and strategy replanning”. So our dinky little house-and-car combo probably won’t cut it.

For the Project phase, competitors will have to “…research a real-world problem” and “…create an innovative solution and then share their findings”. Yeah, that’s also a bit above our pay grade.

But you can head on over to the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre if you happen to be in the area, as there’s bound to be some spectator value in the creative LEGO-based inventions. While you’re at it, stop past Maker Faire Africa which is taking place at the same time.