FARMINGTON — Learning about science, technology, engineering and mathematics can be fun when it’s done as a team and uses robots made of LEGOs, say members of this year’s LEGO League team from Mt. Blue Middle School.

That is what keeps the interest high for these eight youngsters. Last year, the team took first place in the state competition and went on to compete in a national contest at Legoland in San Diego, Calif.

The FIRST LEGO League Challenge fuses hands-on learning and research with fun and teamwork, according to the organization’s website. “FIRST” stands for For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

The team, which calls itself Sunnyside Up, presented their skit Tuesday before the Regional School Unit 9 board. They demonstrated a robotic challenge using props and a robot constructed of LEGO blocks.

The group will compete against 65 other Maine schools Dec. 10 in the Augusta Civic Center.

This year’s international challenge for students, ages 9 to 14, is to learn about food safety through hands-on experiments and research. As part of the program, students have to come up with their own innovative solution to the problem of food contamination.

The Mt. Blue team’s research led them to the suggestion that in the future, hand-held scanners that can detect food pathogens will be developed for home use.

After the tournament Dec. 10, teams will share their work with their communities through skits, talks and presentations. Team members are Ben Andrews, Grace Andrews, James Guillaume, Mitch Guillaume, Thomas Marshal, Alex Morrell, Nicole Pires and Dylan Roberts. Coaches are University of Maine at Farmington professor Linda Beck, Jan Roberts, Jim Guillaume and Ellen Roberts.

Since they started meeting in September, the local team has studied and compared salmonella found in commercial and organic eggs. They learned how to extract DNA from the eggs, and compared the levels of contamination. As part of their research, they worked with UMF professor Jean Doty and consulted with Maine scientists, including UMF professors David Heroux and Carole Lee, and Eddy Lee.

The challenge is for each team to research, write and perform a skit that focuses on what they learned about food safety and food-borne pathogens, describe how large commercial producers can prevent contamination during food processing, and also what people can do at home to avoid becoming sick from contaminated food.

 “They want us to come up with new and innovative solutions,” team member Mitch Guillaume said.

In the months leading up to the tournament, teams build a robot and program it using patented LEGO software. In the second part of the tournament, they have to make their robot move through a list of assigned “missions” on a regulation, 4-by-8-foot playing field table and complete the tasks within 2.5 minutes.

All the components and the robot on the board must be built according to the competition manual using LEGO building blocks.

Judges evaluate the entries according to the robot game, the five-minute presentation, team spirit and teamwork.

“The judges will be asking questions and these kids will be very good,” said Beck, who attended the demonstration before the school board.