Engineering Excellence: The MiniBot is hosting Season 8 of ‘Texas Brick Brawl’ at Cunae International School Dec. 27-28

THE WOODLANDS, TX – There’s a high-level educational facility in the local area that teaches critical thinking, design, construction, advanced engineering, problem-solving, and competitive events without using a single classroom.

The MiniBot uses labs and an arena to teach young, burgeoning engineers aged 5 - 18 through the design, construction, and implementation of robotics, culminating in an annual ‘Brick Brawl’ where LEGO-crafted motorized contraptions do battle to the last.

The competition – and MiniBot itself – is the brainchild of a neuroscientist and educator who is popularly known as ‘Ms. Rosa.’

"In our workshops, students use LEGO bricks to engineer unique robots designed to teach engineering and physics and focus on problem solving," she said.

By including in the program such aspects as designing robots from scratch without using kits and the high stakes of the ‘Brawl,’ Ms. Rosa ensures plenty of opportunities for mistakes and revisions, with the understanding that improvising, adapting, replanning, and redirecting are the best avenues to equip one to overcome obstacles.

“The brain needs multiple attempts and the opportunity to learn from failure to fully encode expertise,” Ms. Rosa explained. “Building a kit usually follows a linear path that avoids several possible failures, offering little chance for your brain to weed out existing bad thinking models.”

The MiniBot teaches that victory isn’t just about winning battles; it’s about engineering courage, building resilience, and discovering the strength to try again. The program empowers designers to learn faster, think deeper, and promote individuality. Stepping far beyond the boundaries of mere theory and academic knowledge, the program specializes in and promotes advanced engineering skills, individualized training, hands-on experimentation, real world applications, scholarships and college acceptance, and internships and professional outcomes.

On Saturday and Sunday, December 27 and 28, The MiniBot is hosting the Texas Brick Brawl Season 8 at Cunae International School, 5655 Creekside Forest Drive. Admission and parking are both free for the event. This ‘Battle of the Bots’ is a golden opportunity for parents and interested adults to check out the youngest generation of next-level engineers in a competitive environment.

“We’re in a fight for your teen’s focus; today’s teens are stuck in a quiet storm – brilliant minds sink under procrastination, perfectionism, and instant gratification; curiosity shrinks under school pressure; attention spans collapse from endless screen time and stimulation,” said Ms. Rosa. “By transforming engineering into a sport, we rewire procrastination into action, perfectionism into rapid prototyping, and distraction into flow. Combat robotics is about using testing and failures inside our arena to become a better engineer and human outside it. Behind every testing lies 30 - 50 hours of sweat, courage, and intelligence. Through solving mechanical and physics challenges, and even falling into planned failures, our real-world testing trains our engineers in an active, physical intelligence called robotics.”

Learn more about the Brawl at www.woodlandsonline.com/evps/evitem.cfm?evid=198629.

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