Idaho LUG Blog

April was very busy with four separate STEM events including support for the Kuna School District First LEGO League. We have two more STEM events coming up in May. 

MOCFEST planning is ongoing and we are looking forward to our best show yet. We will have more display space and many more public events. If you would like to volunteer  or present at the show let the leadership team know.

There are some STEM events scheduled for this summer. BSU is having an Astro Adventures Camp for 3rd through 6th graders. There are several camps scheduled for June. V.E.R.N. are doing LEGO Robotics Day Camps in July for ages 8-13 in Boise.

We have been asked to support a few other events beginning with the Boise Comic Arts Festival on August 30th and 31st. We have also been invited to participate in the Ontario Oregon Festival of Trees sometime in November, most likely the week before Thanksgiving. These events are opportunities for us to display our MOCs and interact with the community. More information coming soon.

Show and Tell

Shawn & Michael Train layout example	Shawn - Moving table	Andrew - Dragon Knight & woody wagon
Jennifer - Spring Scene	Will - Droid Shop	Greg - GBC Module
Luca - RC Car	Jake - Car Wars

Activity

Shawn and Greg lead a discussion of part categorization and organization strategies. Many great ideas on how to sort and store your LEGO parts. If you have an idea for an activity you would like to share during our monthly meeting please let us know. Next month we will be discussing adding motion to your MOCs. 

We will be taking Avatar to Bricks Cascade in Portland in May. If you are going to be there let us know.

Our next meeting will be on May 22nd at Bricks & Minifigs at 7PM.

The beginning of the year is usually full of STEM or STEAM events at many of our local schools. We have participated in seven events so far with about five more scheduled in the upcoming months. Many thanks to the many members who have participated and helped make these events very successful.

MOCFEST 2025 is fast approaching and we are meeting regularly to plan out our premier event. If you want to help out reach out to the leadership team to get involved. We are asking builders to purchase passes this year, you will still register your MOCs through the IdahoLUG website. Public tickets are also available with an option to purchase a VIP add-on to get exclusive LEGO builds.

Show and Tell

Andrew - Shuttle & Monster Truck	Jeremiah - D&D Characters and Monsters
Jake - Car Wars	Thad - Portal Machine	Group Quilt Squares
Matt - Emmett and Lucy's Home
Sean - Lampshade and Chainmail		Custom Tokens

Our next meeting will be on April 17th at Bricks & Minifigs in Boise, looking forward to seeing you all there.

We have been supporting many STEM/STEAM events in the area. Thank you for all your support for these events. The BSU Science and Technology Fair happened the Saturday after our meeting. We had tower building and bridge building for the attendees. We gave away several prizes for the tallest towers and best bridge.

Our next major event is Boise Hackfort from March 26th - 28th. We have been asked to display some Great Ball Machine (GBC) builds during the event. There is a signup on Signup Genius if you have the time to come and help out.

MOCFEST! planning is in full swing. We are planning for a bigger show this year. ABU Games is letting us use additional space allowing us to have a dedicated STEM room and a room for bigger builds. We plan on displaying Avatar, Isla Nublar and hopefully the National Mall in a separate room. We will have our June meeting at ABU Games so we can begin setting up the larger builds. 

Builder Tickets are now available for purchase. You can still display your MOCs for free, however, if you want to attend the builder dinner and participate in other builder activities you will need to purchase a ticket. You can get a discount by entering ILUGEARLY before check-out.

If you have an idea for this year's trophy please submit your ideas to Greg. We will need 20 trophies so we would like to keep the part cost to $10 or under.

Show and Tell

Half-Life hallway build	Powered-Up Train - Will	Optical Illusion - Thad
RC Big Rig	Rovers - Austin

Greg spent some time discussing different kinds of GBC modules. Part of the new activities we are adding to our meetings in 2025

Remember that we are showing off quilt squares at our March meeting. Looking forward to seeing everyone there.

Happy New Year! We had a great turnout for our first meeting in 2025, thanks to everyone who brought builds for show and tell.

As usual we will be helping out with many STEM events around the Treasure Valley. We will need people to help with these events go to SignUpGenius to volunteer. Here is a list of STEM events we have scheduled so far.

• 30 January - Horizon Elementary 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
• 6 February - Anser Charter 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
• 6 February - Hunter Elementary 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
• 20 February - Roosevelt Elementary 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
• 22 February - BSU Science and Technology Fair 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
• 10 April - Adams Elementary 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
• 11 April - Compass Charter 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Show and Tell

Zach - Jedi Starfighter and Droids	Jake - Crab Mech	Lori - Heart Artwork
Thad - Helmet	Emmanuel - Rock Monsters	Declan - Classic Minifigures
Connie - Modified Ice Festival	Daniel - Animaniacs	Austin - Applejack from My Little Pony
Gerd - disco rollercoaster and Santa's post office mashup	Luka - RC Car	Michael - Train Cars

Activities

In 2025 we are going to offer workshops, training and other activities as a part of our meetings. Greg spent some time discussing the various activities included with the STEM kits that we use at Elementary schools around the valley. Laura provided a workshop on creating low const lighting for LEGO displays using batteries and LEDs. Next month we are planning on doing an introduction to Great Ball Machine (GBC) modules.

We also gave out some non-LEGO baseplates for inspiration in making a simple MOC for a large LEGO Quilt that we will put together in March. If you picked up a baseplate we are looking forward to your creations. If you would like to participate in the project please contact Chris

Future Meetings

We have been meeting on the first Tuesday of the month at ABU Games for a LEGO game night. We are currently running a D&D campaign and many other LEGO board games are always available. If you would like to play some LEGO board games, bring your own games or just want to have more time to socialize with members of the LEGO community we would love to see you. Our next game night is scheduled for February 11th at 7PM.

Our next meeting will be the third Thursday in February (20th) 7PM at Bricks & Minifigs.

As usual we had a big turnout for our December meeting. Our gift exchange had 32 gifts and many great LEGO sets to open and steal. After the gift exchange we shared many wonderful treats that people brought to share.

We are still working on the calendar for next year which will be posted soon. Meetings will continue to be on the third Thursday of each month at Bricks & Minifigs.

Our first event of 2025 will be the BSU Engineering & Science Festival on Saturday February 22nd from 10AM - 3PM. We usually get some help from BSU students for the event but we will need several volunteers from the LUG as well. 

We will also be attending many STEM events at various elementary schools around the Treasure Valley. Last year we were at 10 different STEM nights. We will be conducting training at our January meeting on our STEM kits so everyone can help out. 

We will be adding some more content to our meetings in 2025. The plan is to have our regular meeting with announcements, show and tell and discussion of events and activites we attended. We will then provide a class or activity for anyone who wants to participate. Some of our ideas include GBC workshop, LEGO Motion workshop and using Stud.IO design studio. If you have any ideas on classes or activities you would like to attend or present please contact Chris, Shawn or Greg. 

Show and Tell

Daniel has been working on sculpting some custom minifigure heads for Star Trek The Next Generation and for the Animaniacs. 

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We look forward to seeing everyone at our next meeting on January 16th at 7PM.

We began setup for Festival of Trees on Monday November 25th. We had two large winter village builds one by Emannuel and another group village. We ran many different trains as well as Shawn's Santa's sleigh for almost the entire event. People really enjoyed seeing all of the builds and we got a lot of great comments from the many visitors.

During the event we had about 16 tables filled with various builds, three free build tables and a make and take build designed by Shawn. We sold 125 of the Idaho with Tree builds and were sold out by Friday afternoon. Declan was our top seller during the event.

We had over 40 volunteers who contributed over 400 hours during the event. Everyone helped with answering questions, helping with the make and take as well as the free build tables. There was a lot of troubleshooting of the various trains and other builds that included motion. We also went through lots of batteries.

Event Pictures

Our space viewed from behind the train table	Emmanuel's Winter Village	Castle and Loki's Library
Free Play Models
Idaho LUG Logo all Decorated	Tower by Shawn	Make and Take

This was a fantastic event, we talked to many families and promoted our group as well as MOCFEST! 2025. I have posted more pictures in the Member Event Gallery. All members can add photos to the gallery as well.