Last Saturday morning the Yellow Box Community of Naperville had a full house. These were not regular churchgoers but were little children passionate about Science and Technology and especially interested in robotics.

Archana Sharma from Naperville was hosting the annual Junior First Lego League. She has been doing this for four consecutive years. As a Naperville resident I feel thankful to her for making this obscure event into a fairly popular one. This year over sixteen teams participated in the challenge – Waste Wise.

The founder of Scarce Recycling center Mrs. Kay McKeen told the crowd the importance of recycling, and how various things get made into new things. I learnt that old X-Ray records can be made into soft t-shirts.

The kids were proudly showing off their projects to the judges, who patiently listened to the little scientists on Whats, Whys and Hows of their project. One team asked me if I rinse all the milk cans before putting in the recycling bin. “Not always,” was my reply. Well, then it’s no use putting that milk container in the recycling bin because that is just trash! I got a slice of education on recycling by a seven-year-old!

The projects of the little scientists were impressive. Every one of them had built a simple machine and showed us how single stream recycling works.

All kids eligible for this contest should participate in this event. It gives them a base in how engineering works while learning about a social cause.

Written by Suchitra Sharma