NASHUA – The newly formed after school FIRST Lego League Jr. program at Mount Pleasant Elementary School has been so popular in the first month that school officials already are looking at resources to help expand it, principal Patricia Snow said.

Mount Pleasant was one of three schools in Nashua (alongside Elm Street and Fairgrounds Middle Schools) to receive a grant from the New Hampshire Department of Education for FLL programs to get kids involved in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM fields.

This is the first time the NH DOE has offered this as a grant, Snow said.

The program is open to third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students and, according to Snow, they had more than 40 applicants for the 20 available spots.

FIRST Lego students work after school to program, code and build robots and enter them in competitions.

It “challenges and engages” students, Snow said, and helps create a love of the “collaborative process” and “team building.”

The program, which originally began in Manchester, has grown to a global scale and now has hundreds of thousands of participants, according to the FLL website.

“The kids really love it,” Snow stressed. “They can’t get enough.”

It is especially important, she said, to get kids involved in STEM at a young age because at this point, some of the careers these kids will have don’t even exist yet. They need to prepare and expose students to different technical skills and give them hands on experience.

The Mount Pleasant FLL Jr. team meets Tuesdays from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.

Hannah LaClaire can be reached at 594-1243 or hlaclaire@nashuatelegraph.com.