BALLSTON SPA -- Fifth-grade students in the Ballston Spa School District are learning what it is like to be an engineer.
Thanks to a grant from Time Warner Cable, students are taking part in "Engineering is Elementary," a six-week program implemented by the Children's Museum of Science and Technology focused on civil engineering and transportation.
The after-school program is being offered to fifth-grade students in the Ballston Spa School District.
"Students are learning how to take an idea and problem and produce an end result," said Dawn Baldwin, one of the CMOST instructors.
"It is not all just talking and books. We do a lot of hands-on experiments."
Baldwin explained how making learning fun and relevant along with hands-on challenges leads to a greater interest in the science and engineering field at a young age.
"Students are taken through challenges that require creative thinking and decision-making," Baldwin said.
Students in the program made a model road intersection and were challenged with the task of how to make the intersection work safely using stop lights and road signs.
"We are preparing students for later in life," said Diane Irwin, the district science coordinator, stating the district's goal of preparing students for the 21st century.
At the completion of the six-week course the students will have designed and created a magnetic levitation train.
"We are using magnets to levitate things and learning about electricity," said Peter Hansen, a fifth-grader in the program.
Shannon Hansen, Peter's mother, said she is happy to see a program that applies math and science at this grade level.
"My hope is that Peter will come out of the program with an understanding and appreciation of engineering and science," Hansen said.
The program is not the first to be offered in the district. Middle school students took part in a summer program where they designed and constructed robots and wrote computer programs to operate the robots.
"The student interest in our summer engineering program was overwhelming and demonstrated the growing need for our integration of STEM-related information opportunities in our curriculum," said Irwin.
In addition to the engineering programs, in an effort to get kids excited about STEM -- science, technology, engineering and math -- the district has implemented robotics programs into the elementary and middle schools and plans to offer more STEM learning opportunities in the future.