Christopher Clark, 6, of Suffolk gleefully watches his rubber band-propelled helicopter spin about 10 feet up into the air before crashing to the ground.

With rainbow-colored duct tape, cardboard and a ruler, Makai Gillis, 9, is busy designing an environmentally friendly container.

Welcome to spring break at Engineering for Kids, a business at Chesapeake Center Shopping Center where more than two dozen children have spent the week learning and playing.

Cheryl and Mark Ellis, both mechanical engineers, opened Engineering for Kids in February 2015. Located at 4300 Portsmouth Blvd., near Chesapeake Square Mall, the business uses hands-on activities to teach science, technology, engineering and math to children between the ages of 4 and 14.

Engineering for Kids often takes its lessons on the road to schools, community fairs and summer camps, Ellis said. But on weekends, after school and during spring and summer breaks, most programs are offered at the store.

“Everything we do is hands-on,” said Angel Jones, operations director. “That’s important, because children need to touch, feel, and experience things on their level … because they will retain more and are more likely to remember.”

Engineering for Kids uses planned curricula, including LEGO Robotics and Minecraft Education programs, said Jones. The curricula cover all types of engineering: civil, technical, chemical, environmental, electrical, industrial, marine, aerospace and mechanical.

“We are relabeling engineering so STEM is cool to kids,” Ellis said. As a female engineer, it’s particularly important to her to expose young girls to STEM opportunities, she added.

“We want to make kids excited about technology,” Jones said. “Other countries are so far ahead of us in mathematics and technology …. and many U.S. companies are recruiting engineers from other countries.

“We have to do this in order to compete globally and bring jobs back to the United States.”

The kids don’t appear overly concerned about the global impact. For them, this week is about fun.

Aspen Zukowski, 9, of Portsmouth spent Thursday adding castle turrets, trees, flowers and a lake to the computer game she designed this week.

“I’ve used block coding before, but this lets you do a lot more,” said Zukowski. “This is more fun.”

The budding entrepreneur plans to sell copies of her computer game for $10.

“I like to make money,” she said. “Financial gain and world domination are my goals.”

Designing his own computer game has been a little confusing, said Sincere Parker, 10, of Norfolk.

“It’s hard, because you have to remember a lot of information,” he said. “But I will get it. I just have to keep trying.”

Tony Speller, 11, of Suffolk has decided he want to design video games professionally when he grows up.

“I would have to play video games all day to make them,” he said. “This is fun … and it’s given us a chance to show what we (kids) can do.

“A lot of times, we don’t get much credit, but kids are a lot smarter than we look.”