Teaching kids the building blocks of engineering with Legos

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WAND)- Encouraging kids to learn new skills while expressing their creativity. Parkland College in Champaign hosts College for Kids every summer, teaching a wide range of topics for kids to explore their interests and continue learning while school is out for the summer.

One of the many courses offered over the summer is Engineering with Legos building on the student's passions for the future.

Course instructor, Trent Chassy says, "We are learning basic coding principles, and mechanical engineering principles. They're building cars and Ferris Wheels and arcade games and all types of cool stuff to give them the skills to have big, rich, fruitful careers as future engineers."

Organizers believe that this course provides the basic building blocks of coding but pushes students to start thinking about more complex concepts. While this is an introductory course, they are gaining the base knowledge they need to become engineers in the future.

"I think any of the students could someday go on to work for Google. We've looked at long lines of code that are really complex, that I can barely understand, but we also start really small."

The main goal for instructors is to teach basic principles to benefit the students regardless of whatever field they hope to enter in the future. While students are seeing what the field of engineering is like they are able to express themselves by creating projects that fit their interests.

"Giving kids the basic ability to interact with the technology that we have, they will be able to be fruitful, strong members of society in whatever field they end up going into."

They also hope to stress the importance or STEM skills and education.

"They're the basics of how we conduct life and so having a STEM education at some level will benefit any student who wants to change the world for the better."

Building the students confidence, creativity, and knowledge one block at a time. The College for Kids program is for kids ages 6 to 13 with the goal of encouraging kids to explore, create, code, and imagine.