ORANGE PARK – The FIRST LEGO League junior team No. 11157 Ocean Pyramid Master Builders embodies how much education and academia have changed.

The team made up of first through third-grade boys and girls from Orange Park are learning and working to make their mark. The Ocean Pyramid Master Builders is a team of six home-schooled children. Members of the team are Matthew Oswald, 6, Kender Sikora, 8, Aden Marbut, 7, Reagan Singletary, 7, Eliana Tinoco, 7, Ema Cauvel, 7, Eva Cuavel, 9, and Ethan Marbut, 6.

Each year the FLL has a theme. This year’s theme is “Boomtown Build.” The students who participate work to create, via LEGO and robotics, a “safe, healthy and happy community” that demonstrates their view of First City.

The OPMB team’s build is a motorized LEGO build of a floating hotel and pet sanctuary. The team met weekly to work on their build, during which time they received instruction in basic computer programming coding and learning about structural engineering, design and architecture. The build turned out to be a great success, securing the team a spot in the upcoming world competition in Texas from April 15-18.

Of the team, only six are authorized to present at competition, although all members played significant roles in the development of the project. Reagan, Aden, Ema, Eva and Eliana will travel to Houston.

“These kids have worked for about three months putting this project together,” said Charlotte Singletary, coach of OPMB and mother of Reagan Singletary. “They’re just excited to share their enthusiasm and passion for science and STEM and engineering and programming. A lot of them just hope to continue and grow up to be programmers and architects and scientists. This is a great steppingstone for that next level.”

“I think it’s great that [FIRST LEGO] is introducing young kids to STEM and to coding,” said Virginia Marbut, mother of team member Aden. “These are all skills that we are going to need in our future and I’m really excited for the kids to go to worlds and experience different teams from other cultures and pick their brains about what their builds are and what they’ve done.”

“My daughter has gained so much confidence with science, technology and engineering,” said Katie Sikora, Kender’s mother. “She’s learned a lot of physics which I don’t think would have ordinarily been available for her. She’s gained a lot of confidence in her area of science that she loves so much. I think it’s just a really cool opportunity.”

The team has had great support from local contributors, including Renaissance Jax and Shiva Robotics.

Before going to the world competition, OPMB will have a private meeting with Orange Park Mayor Connie Thomas on Friday, where they will demonstrate and explain their project. Following the meeting, the team will attend the regional championship on Saturday which will be the largest robotics tournament in Florida history with more than 150 teams.

The parents aren’t the only ones excited about the upcoming trip to Texas.

“First, I’m also going to visit my grandpa,” said Aden Marbut. “Also, I really want to see if we can make the build more durable, accessible and any one of our missions, I guess.”

Excitement is at a high not only for the trip, but for continuing STEM education for the team and the parents of the team members. Some say their daughters are empowered by the knowledge they are gaining and seeing a cool new world of opportunities available for girls. STEM is the future; the OPMB team is exploring that future and it looks bright.

With each successive generation, the focus on specific academic disciplines shifts to whatever is most important for that time in history and whatever is most applicable to society.

Right now, the focus is on science, technology, engineering and math. In an era of technology and its continuous advancement, there is no greater and arguably no more important academic focus in history. Just about everything we do and how we interact in the modern developed world is dependent on STEM. As the future becomes the present and invariably, the present again gives way to the future, the STEM disciplines become more and more important.