Girls Take on TOYchallenge

A group of girls at Lowell Elementary School will take their own toy designs to a national engineering competition this month to prove they can do just as well as boys.

"Science is not a boy thing anymore,"" said Monique Devora, 13, a sixth-grader.

She and three other girls designed a new toy called a ""springboard,"" a skateboard on springs instead of wheels. They dreamed it up during an after-school science club and are working on a prototype.

In all, three teams of young girl scientists from Lowell, about a dozen girls in all, have been invited to compete in the TOYchallenge 2006 Nationals in San Diego on April 29.

The competition is designed to get middle-school-age students, especially girls, interested in science and engineering and encourage them to pursue careers in those fields, said Lily Tom, an engineer turned math teacher at Lowell.

Sally Ride Science, founded by the first woman astronaut to support girls' interest in science and math, runs the TOYchallenge. At least half of the members on each of the 100 teams competing must be girls.

Lowell's teams are all girls.

"We're having fun at the same time we're learning,"" said Jenny Moreno, 12, who helped create the spring-loaded skateboard. Her math grade has jumped from a C to an A since she joined the science club.

The second team of girls at Lowell created a board game to teach young children about colors and numbers. The third team came up with a board game that teaches math and money management.

The girls still need to raise about $1,700 for traveling expenses. Wells Fargo, which sponsors the girls' after-school Sally Ride Science Club, will match any money they raise.