TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - It was a competition to improve STEM skills.
A Lego team qualifying event at the Toledo Technology Academy between fourth through eighth grade students from 20 Northwest Ohio schools.
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
The teams built programmed Lego robots to drive around a board to perform different challenges.
They race against the clock to get points.
"I think it's really cool and really interesting to see tons of robots here," said student Chase Richards.
Student Kyzur Duran-Dickerson liked the fact that the competition uses the toy building blocks.
"Because it's fun and we get to use Legos," said Kyzur.
And that's exactly the point.
The lesson here is to work together as a team and build up STEM skills with Legos to find jobs later in life.
"It doesn't matter is that's where the jobs are. If the kids don't like it, don't have fun, they won't do it. And here, the kids have fun," said Dale Price of TTA.
Chase's mom Julie gets a kick out of watching him play with Legos.
She knows it could help him in the future.
"He's absolutely learning about science and technology. Something he's already interested in, so it's further pushing his interest which is today's world," said Julie.
Eight winning teams from the Toledo competition will play with their Lego robots next at district finals in Bowling Green.
