Each quarter, students engage in PBLs (project/problem-based learning) that are aligned to content standards. PBLs require students to take on a career-related role and use the Engineering Design Process to design and create a product or solve a problem while collaborating with other students. Students then present and share what they have learned, created, or explain how they solved a problem. Kindergartners, while learning about senses, take on the role of toy designers and design a toy that makes use of the senses of sight, touch, sound, and smell. First graders, while learning about light interactions, take on the role of lighting engineers and build devices that help others understand how light interacts with different materials such as transparent, translucent, opaque, and reflective. Second graders, while learning about the impacts of pushes, pulls, collisions, and friction, take on the role of game designers and toy engineers to design and create a game that incorporates pushes, pulls, collisions, and friction into the game. Third graders, while learning about how the forces of static electricity, gravity, and magnetism can cause objects to move without touching them, take on the role of transportation engineers and decide which force would be best for creating a train that moves along a track without touching it. Fourth graders, while composing an original piece of poetry in their ELA class, take on the role of exhibit engineers and use programs such as MakerCase and Inkscape to design laser-cut items to display their poems. Fifth graders, while reading the novel "Esperanza Rising" and learning about dust storms, take on the role of structural engineers as they design and build a model cabin that they will test by blowing sand onto the cabin with a leaf blower to see if their cabin design and fabrication skills can keep the sand out of the cabin. PBLs like these help students grow in content, technical, and essential skills.