News Photo by Julie Goldberg Ella White Elementary School fifth-grader Noah Tolan works on fixing the claw on his robot Wednesday at Alpena High School.

ALPENA — Alpena High School is hosting local elementary school robotics teams this week for a VEX IQ Robotics camp to help prepare the teams for the upcoming robotics season.

Throughout the week, teams will participate in different challenges after they work to build their robots. The challenges are programming, drag racing, cup stacking, and object dropping.

AHS students have been mentoring the elementary students and answering any questions they may have.

“We’re building the foundation of robotics in Alpena as well as teaching the kids problem-solving and patience and perseverance when their robots don’t work properly,” teacher Melissa Doubek said.

Doubek said the week is about helping the elementary students build the robots and figure out different mechanisms to achieve the goal of being able to complete a task similar to what the high schoolers do during the robotics season.

Ella White Elementary School fifth-grader Noah Tolan said his favorite part about the week has been working as a team to program the robot. He also liked the cup-stacking challenge, which all the teams competed in on Wednesday.

“You can stack them, there’s different color cups and you can stack them into sections and you get a certain amount of points,” he said.

Gavin Winterstein, another Ella White fifth-grader, said his favorite part of the week was building the robot.

“It’s just really fun and complicated at the same time,” Winterstein said.

The students are learning all about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) while at the camp to help them get ready for the school year and robotics season.

“This is a great STEM activity for kids to do in the summer and they will then continue in the fall with the league,” Doubek said.

Doubek said the camp has been taking place since 2015 and has had a lot of support from the local community foundation.

“Michigan Works helped us get this on the ground and get it started,” she said.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com or 989-358-5688.