The EPro8 Challenge is a competition, an engineering and problem-solving race. Every year over 10,000 students from 900 schools from throughout New Zealand take part.

Teams compete to:

• build large-sized structures
  
• solve practical problems
  
• engineer using pulleys, motors, gears, wheels and axles
  
• invent machines that can complete simple tasks
  
• undertake unusual and fun experiments.
  
• construct basic electronic circuits.
  
• solve interesting problems using practical maths
  

Each team of four works at a workstation containing an impressive assortment of easy to use parts and equipment. The 3-hour event begins with a tutorial on the equipment teams will be using.Teams are given a booklet containing a number of challenges. All the challenges are of an entertaining physical nature.
Teams choose which challenges they wish to undertake. The harder the challenge, the more points it is worth. There is not enough time to finish all the challenges - so strategy is required to know which ones to go for.
When teams have completed a challenge they push the "Big Red Button". They are judged and the points are added to the live leaderboard.

This year we have purchased an ePro8 kit, as pictured above, so we can train our children for the competition next year. This kit will be so much fun to use - it has metal bars, connectors, gears, pulleys, wheels and rope.