Home Program
What do we run?
Four formats. A weekly program in Taipei schools across a term, other sessions around Taipei, multi-day trips outside Taipei, and Train the Trainer sessions that leave a community able to run this without us. All of them use the same curriculum, built on FIRST LEGO League.
Format one
小小工程師計畫: The Little Engineers Program
Our weekly program, run with elementary schools in Taipei. One session a week for two to three months, so children build on what they did the week before rather than starting fresh each time.
We run it with the Taipei City Department of Education, and it was the first FLL curriculum ever taught in Mandarin in Taipei’s public schools. It now runs in six elementary schools, Shidong, Zhonghsiao, Nanmen, Dahu, Guoyu Experimental and Tianmu, taught alongside FRC teams 7497 MARAHO, 7589 Lishan Blue Magpie, 8020 CyberpunK, 6191 RoboKryptonite and 7645 nkmtc.
- Where
- Elementary schools in Taipei
- How often
- One session a week
- How long
- Two to three months
- Curriculum
- Built on FIRST LEGO League
Format two
Other sessions around Taipei
Not everything we run in Taipei is The Little Engineers Program. How much we can cover depends on how long we have a group for, so a session takes one of three shapes.
Single workshops
A few hours. Children work on problem solving by inventing mechanisms quickly to clear FLL missions, alongside the basics of coding.
Training camps
A full day of more detailed content. We go further into coding, and into how mechanisms such as bevel gears actually work.
Weekly placements
Weekly across two to three months, and the only format that covers everything: the ins and outs of SPIKE Prime, several FLL games, a full competition between the students, and time for activities that are simply fun.
Format three
Outreach trips
A trip means the Taipei team travelling outside Taipei for several days or a full week, teaching a different venue most days. A single session near home is not a trip. We have made trips to Tainan, Chiayi and Taitung.
Schools
Elementary schools mostly, and junior high schools from time to time.
Churches
Churches host a good part of our outreach teaching, and reach children a school timetable does not.
Wherever children are
A children’s bookhouse in Taitung, an orphanage in Taipei, and the children’s cancer ward at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.
Format four
Train the Trainer
We cannot reach every community ourselves, so we teach other people to run this without us. Other FRC robotics teams, and the pastors, volunteers and teachers already working in a community, learn to deliver SPIKE Prime and FLL themselves. A team we train keeps teaching their own neighbourhood long after our trip ends.
At the TAS Tech Cube we have trained more than 100 students from six FRC teams to mentor FLL teams. In Tainan we trained FRC Team 6998 UniPards to run FLL in their own city. Our pastor training camp has prepared more than 40 pastors and teachers from over 20 rural churches and schools, and we keep supporting them through Zoom office hours every two weeks.
- 17 to 18 June 2025 A two-day camp at Taitung Full Gospel Church 台東純福音教會 for pastors, volunteers and high school students. By the second day some were designing robots of their own.
- August 2025 Taught alongside students from Nanke Experimental High School 南科實中 in Tainan, so they could carry the teaching on locally.
- 13 December 2025 A session at the TAS Tech Cube for more than 40 high school students from Taipei First Girls High School 北一女, Chenggong High School 成功高中 and other schools.
- 6 September 2026 At Taipei American School, run with FRC 8020 CyberpunK and Unipards.
Once a year
The Taiwan FRC Conference
Format four reaches one team at a time. Once a year every FRC team in Taiwan comes to the same building instead. The conference is hosted under FRC 4253 Raid Zero and organised by our team, and it is the one day in the year when the room is full of the people who teach robotics rather than the children learning it.
The conferences so far
- 31 August 2024 More than 300 high-school students from 26 FRC teams across Taiwan spent the day at the TAS Tech Cube, on tours, on sessions about where robotics and AI in Taiwan are going, and on what a team does beyond building its own robot. Run with FRC 8020 CyberpunK. FRC 8503 Raid One, our sister team at Taipei American School, helped run the day.
- 6 September 2026 At Taipei American School, run with FRC 8020 CyberpunK and Unipards.
The shape of a session
Build it, program it, compete
Whichever format, a session moves through the same three stages. Across a weekly term the children go deeper into each one; on a trip they cover all three in a single visit.
In a weekly term the building takes the first session or two, the programming follows, and the last week is usually a mock competition that our volunteers referee. On a trip the same arc is compressed into one visit: build, program, then a run at the mat before we pack the kits away. Either way the children do the building and the programming themselves, with a volunteer sitting beside them rather than standing at the front.
Build it
Children assemble a driving base from scratch, learning which motors are wheels and which drive an attachment. Nothing arrives pre-built.
Program it
Children write their first program in blocks, run it, and watch what the robot actually does rather than what they expected.
See the curriculum →Compete
Mission challenges from the current FIRST LEGO League season close the session, which is the part where a child who said "I can't" is suddenly explaining their solution to the room.
What we bring
What do you need to provide?
We bring
Robot kits, laptops, printed materials, the mission mats, and the high-school volunteers who teach.
You provide
A room with tables and power, and one adult present for the duration. That is the whole list.
Who it suits
Mostly elementary students, and junior high students from time to time. No prior computer or robotics experience is assumed.
