EXCHANGE: Indiana 8th graders learn to think like engineers

(AP) — Eighth-graders may seem a little old for toys, but at Batchelor Middle School, the students were hooked on a project to make a pull toy for their introduction to engineering class.

From a flying tank to a ship, a race car, a train and even an all-terrain vehicle, 24 eighth-grade students in teacher Rob Freese's Project Lead the Way class got creative and thought like engineers to make a toy that would use a mechanism to transfer energy.

In some cases, the students had to go back to the drawing board and redesign their toy.

Each student worked with a partner, and even though they hit a few bumps in the road, figuring out how to get their pull toy moving was fun.

Freese not only teaches the Project Lead the Way class, he's also an art teacher, and he's eager to try out the pull toy assignment again.