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MANSFIELD -- Watch out Thomas Edison, you may have some new company in the pantheon of great inventors.

With goggles covering their eyes and smiles lighting up their faces, 17 local children spent their week inventing robots to do their chores and building roller coasters to thrill riders as part of a national program that focuses on creativity and teaches a little science along the way.

Jordan/Jackson Elementary School played host this week to Club Invention, a national program that lets children test the limit of their imaginations while learning the principals of physics. The children spent their days completing a series of interactive experiments, including creating gadgets to break water balloons.

"They really get to practice their problem solving skills," said Shawna Leary, director of the Mansfield program.

In breaking the water balloons, the requirement was that the gadget perform the task in four steps. It was left to the children and their imaginations to fill in the rest of the details. A catapult was the answer for Jarrett Saunders, a fifth-grader, and James Chotkowski, a fourth-grader, both of Mansfield.

"We started out building something else, but he had a spoon and we thought a catapult would be fun to build," Saunders said.

The boys designed a system that requires a ball to fall through a cup and into a spoon that will act as the catapult.

In building their contraptions, the children relied on recyclables, as well as parts of broken record players and radios they brought from home.

"It's completely up to them to turn these parts into something completely new," Leary said.

The camp is divided into two age groups. While the older kids worked on the balloon project, the younger ones were learning about vehicle safety and building cars and skateboard that would protect riders.

Gabbey DiMartino, a Mansfield third-grader, built a car covered with cotton balls and complete with passenger seat belts to ensure the safety of anyone aboard.

"This way, if you fall backwards you won't hurt yourself," DiMartino said.

There is little pressure on the children to succeed in their goals, but rather to think critically and try and find new ways to make their inventions work.

Linda Bolton, an instructor at the camp who lives in Attleboro, guides the children toward figuring out how to make the cars safer, but does not tell them what to do. "What about that worked?" she asked the group after a test of one of the cars. "Show us what will make this safer."

This is the third year Jordan/Jackson has held the camp, which is open to children from all towns. All the materials, including T-shirts for the participants, are provided by Club Invention, which was developed in 1990 by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation.

While the camp wraps up today when families can come and see the inventions their children made, instructor Susan Rivard said some children are already looking towards the future.

"Some of the kids have already started asking me when they can sign up for next year," she said.