Fourth-graders get creative

"The only real mistake is one from which you don't learn."

Fearn Elementary School fourth-grade teacher Kelly Starck has a poster behind her desk with that saying on it and it seemed like an appropriate sentiment for the fourth-graders competing in the school's first Invention Convention this week.

Students in all five fourth-grade classrooms were assigned to create their own inventions. On Tuesday, the students brought their creations to school and showed them to each other in preparation for the judging in the gym that night.

Juniors from West Aurora High School science classes judged the younger kids on creativity, originality and effort with a tie breaker going to the most marketable invention.

Braigen Mueller of North Aurora won the first-prize medal for her Tushy Cushy Organizer. Lucas Warren, of Aurora received a second-place ribbon for his Warren'08 Super Dart Bowl and Joe Garlando of North Aurora won third place ribbon for his Book Clip Cap.

"Mrs. Starck said that I should go to the principal and see if I could sell my Tushy Cushy next year at school registration," Mueller said.

The sample Tushy Cushy on display was a pink padded seat cushion that tied on the chair seat and slid over the back of the classroom chairs providing extra comfort and, as Mueller demonstrated, additional storage places and portability.

Mueller sewed the seat cushion herself. The decorated side pockets were attached with Velcro to the sides of the seat cushion to provide pencil, marker and eraser storage.

"It's washable and you can take it with you from class to class and put everything in the drawstring bag," she explained. The sample Tushy Cushy was fully decorated in pink.

A less decorative model in denim blue sat next to it. "I just made it yesterday so the boys don't feel left out."

Lucas Warren had a large crowd of boys around his 8 by 4 "Warren '08 Super Dart Bowl."

"I'll give you $80 for that, man," said a wide-eyed fellow fourth-grader. Other boys also chimed in with bids for the green felt Styrofoam board game decorated with all the NFL team helmets.

The game comes with a scorecard and a complete set of complex directions for the dice, cards and darts used to play the virtual football game.

"We saw a baseball game like this in a bar in Wisconsin last year when we were on a snowmobiling trip and I thought I could make one like it for football," said the very tall 10-year-old inventor wearing a football jersey.

He says that his large game board could be put up in a basement "where you don't mind if anything gets hit."

Ten-year-old inventors Savannah Kral and Madeline Flynn of North Aurora experimented a little before perfecting their Scoop and Eat 3000.

"We were looking around the grocery store for ideas and wanted to make ice cream spoons you could eat," Flynn said.

The team tried to make spoon-shaped chocolate cookies.

"But the first batch was just blobs," Kral explained. Pictures of the first batch of blobs were part of the girls' poster board project, along with photos of happy girls eating ice cream with cookie spoons.

After the blobs, the girls decided to try out the recipe for pan cookies and cut them out in spoon shapes. This method proved successful.

I asked the girls how many Spoon and Eat 3000 cookie spoons it took to eat a bowl of ice cream.

"It depends on how hard your ice cream is," Kral said knowingly. She said that ice cream that has had a while to warm up first is easier on the spoons.

Riordan Stanton of North Aurora also had a food invention to demonstrate. He had a hot dog oven made from small aluminum tins with room for one hot dog inside.

The hot dog was heated with a 50 watt and a 100 watt light bulb with tiny circle mirrors on the bottom of the contraption. He said it takes 20 minutes to fully cook the sausage with the bulbs attached to a portable battery unit.

"The mirrors focus all the energy on the hot dog," he said.

Stanton admitted that he had never actually eaten one of the hot dogs heated in his creation. "But I'm gonna eat one tonight," he said bravely.

Teacher Starck said that she was pleased with the students' efforts.

"This was their first time to really create something," Starck said. "You could see how excited they were seeing what everyone had done."

All the students received certificates for their inventions.

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CORRECTION: Please note that the Web site for soldiers' care packages was not correct in Monday's column. If you want to help out Joliet's Debbie Smothers with her mission to help out forgotten soldiers, see her non-profit's Web site at www.OperationCarePackages.org.