With a little bit of science and a little bit of creativity, five students at Brookhill Elementary School were able to raise money and buy pet supplies for the dogs and cats of Athens-Limestone Animal Shelter.

Cherise Pryor, Joy Malone, Aniya Lindsay, RileyAnn Sims and Kaleigh Langford were all students of Donna Schexnayder’s fourth-grade class at Brookhill. At the start of last school year, the school implemented Eagle Time, a 30-minute program that meets each Friday to brainstorm ways for students to help the school or community.

“At first, we were going to do bouncy balls but we found out we had to use an oven and all that, and we didn’t want to use up all our time,” Sims said.

“We weren’t really sure what to do, and we wanted to be creative in what we were making,” said Langford.

Sims said they wanted to do something that would be popular with their classmates. Eventually, they landed on the idea of lava lamps.

“We were thinking about different reactions,” Sims said. “We found out that oil doesn’t react with water, so we used that to make the lava lamps.”

Langford said they looked online for directions on how to make lava lamps. They collected plastic bottles, such as those for water and sports drinks, then put their new science knowledge to the test and created lava lamps out of water, oil and food coloring. They also made stress balls out of balloons and flour.

Finally, they shared their crafts with other classes at Brookhill.

“It was actually really cool,” Langford said. “I was actually really nervous when we had our first class, but after that, it was really fun and we learned a lot from how different classes act.”

“They kept asking questions,” Sims said. “A lot of them asked, ‘Can we drink it?’ and we said, ‘You can, but it will make you sick.'”

Originally, baby oil was used in the lamps, but they soon learned a different oil was needed.

“We found out that the baby oil will expire in the water if it stays too long, so my friends started using canola oil,” Sims said. “One girl was showing them around the house and her neighborhood, and she was using vegetable oil, but most of us were using canola oil.”

This took care of the expiration effect, but Sims said canola oil still came with a drawback.

“It sometimes ends up in one big gloop,” she said. “But then you can shake it up and make little bubbles again.”

By the end of the school year, people were wanting a lava lamp of their own to keep. The girls decided to sell lava lamps for $1 apiece, small stress balls for one quarter each and larger ones for 75 cents, according to Sims’ mom, Marie.

“We sold a couple to teachers and a lot of third- and second-graders wanted to buy one,” Sims said. “And there was a few first-graders and people in our class who wanted to buy them.”

All told, the girls were able to raise $54.10. Sims and Langford said the plan was to donate the money to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, but another group beat them to the punch with a lemonade stand, so they decided to donate to the animal shelter instead.

“We bought them a big bag of adult dog food, a big bag of puppy dog food and some bones,” Langford said. “And for cats, we got them some little treats and then we got them kitten food and adult cat food.”

Much like everything else along the way, the girls went as a group to drop off the supplies.

“It was really fun, because we got to see all the dogs, and we got to play with them,” said Langford, who has a dog of her own at home.

“We taught one dog tricks,” Sims, who has two dogs and a cat, said. “We put our finger at the top of the fence, and we taught it how to jump to the top of the fence when we put our finger there.”

When asked if they would be willing to have a similar fundraiser in the future, Sims responded with a firm yes, “because we had a lot of success with that.”

Langford agreed.

Making happy

Elsewhere in Schexnayder’s class, a second group built and sold rubber band jewelry to buy “happies” for children at Athens-Limestone Hospital. It was a cause fourth-grader Elisabeth Harris knew well.

“My little sister is always in the hospital, because she has seizures,” Harris said. “Nurses give her little happies for getting her blood drawn or getting her IV out. She always gets a prize, and we thought it would be nice for all these little kids in the hospital, when they do something good like get their IV out, to have a happy.”

Happies, she said, are little toys given to child patients, such as a tiny baby doll, tea set or necklace. Harris and her classmates decided to buy toys to donate to the hospital using money they raised selling bracelets, necklaces and rings made from tiny rubber bands.

“We sold them to teachers and students and around Canebrake, our neighborhood,” Harris said.

Harris said she and her classmates pitched in to make the jewelry. Bracelets were sold for 75 cents each, with charms and rings available for 25 cents each and necklaces available for $1 each. By the end of their sale, Harris’ group — which included classmates Luke Vaughan, Zakian Jackson, Connor Stiles and Cohen Winter — were able to raise $100.

After the money was gathered, the group visited a local dollar store, where they set about finding the perfect toys to donate. Once the purchase was complete, Harris said, they went to the emergency room of a local hospital and donated the goods.

“It made me so happy, because I know they’ll be happy that someone out there cares about them and wants to donate toys,” Harris said.

Like Sims and Langford, Harris said she would definitely be up to repeat the experience.

“We’re always looking for ways to help the children in the hospital,” she said. “… We appreciate that Brookhill gave us this opportunity to do this to help our community and the little kids and just allowing us to be open to this type of stuff.”