And then there's the FIRST LEGO League competition [1], which takes middle- and junior high-level teams and these sets of MINDSTORMS and has them work together to build a robot for competitive play, teaching STEM principles on the way. There are thousands of teams all over the world, and it's a wonderful experience. The program is also a funnel into the high school-level FIRST Robotics Competition [2], which graduates into actual machining, CADing, programming, and so on, as well as community outreach and business skills from raising funds and structuring a sustainable team.

[1] http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/fll

[2] http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc