Education Grant WinnerNatalie Stuart

Gifting K-5 students with coding and robotics materials is like opening presents! While some subjects may affect attentiveness, you’d be surprised at how many kids are overjoyed when they get to STEM class. Although, for some districts, funding for STEM may be at its infancy, and thus the resources could be limited.

Natalie Stuart, educator at Mead Elementary, saw and opportunity to bolster her STEM inventory and provide further hands-on learning experiences for all of her students. Thanks to Power of the Dollar® members, she was awarded a $1,000 grant in December 2025 for her “Robots for Everyone” project idea, which she then used the grant funds to purchase Edison Robots, an Edison Sketch Pack, charging stations, extension kits, and more!

“Our STEM program keeps going, and I just wanted to continue to incorporate different types of robots into STEM from K-5,” said Stuart. “It was just a wonderful opportunity to give more to our kids. We have 32 different languages spoken here at Mead, and so these robots anyone can use; it doesn’t matter what language they speak, everybody can use it, learn, and be creative with the robots.”

When it comes to robots, it’s all-inclusive—as Ms. Stuart mentioned, Mead Elementary has a wide variety of languages spoken. With these Edison Robots, everyone gets to enjoy basic coding through lines, color, and pictures, while also expanding their knowledge through more challenging coding tasks. And a lot of what STEM has to offer students translates over to real-world experiences, which can be beneficial in developing those problem-solving skills—all while having a ball with ‘em!

“When we bring in new equipment, especially robots, the kids get extremely excited,” she said. “They absolutely love the robots—the kids have really, really enjoyed them. They are working together to build new things. So, it’s really showing their creativity and imagination!”