At the yard sale to raise money to help people hurt by the earthquake in Haiti, the kindergartners snapped up all the Webkinz stuffed animals that fifth-graders Sarah Joran and Hannah Steen brought in.
"We sold all of my 11 Webkinz," Sarah said.
The nine that Hannah brought in went quickly, too.
When Martha Bethel, a fifth-grade teacher at Meadowlark Elementary School, suggested having an in-school yard sale to raise money for the American Red Cross to use in Haiti, the other fifth-grade teachers and their students readily agreed to participate.
Sarah said that she certainly wouldn't want to be in the position of the Haitians who lost people close to them and all of their possessions.
"They are sleeping in sleeping bags on the ground outside," she said.
Hannah said, "I looked it up on YouTube. I saw hospitals full of people who were hurt, and I felt really bad."
On Thursday, the 135 fifth-graders brought in contributions from home -- bracelets, stationery, Pokemon cards, whistles, videos, stuffed animals, books (Hannah Montana, Spiderwick Chronicles, Junie B. Jones) -- and had a preview sale just for fifth-graders.
Yesterday, the fifth-graders laid out their wares on their desks and invited the 665 students in the other grades to drop by the fifth-grade classrooms and shop the yard sale.
"That country doesn't have much money, so we decided to help out," said Chad Ramsey, who was jointly manning a couple of tables in Jonathan Hegedus' classroom with Tom Driscoll, who was offering a used bike helmet at the bargain price of $1.
Shareef Shaban said that shoppers hadn't been showing much interest in his used videotapes, which he attributed to most people's having switched to DVDs. But the two Captain Underpants books he had brought in were long gone, he reported.
Thanks to second-grader Alex Bonner, Meadowlark students had already been making direct cash contributions to the cause.
When Alex suggested to his teacher, Bridgett Kridel, that they ask everyone to contribute their change, she helped him organize everything.
People brought in paper money, too.
Alex and Kridel were taking the contributions from individual classes and combining them in large plastic containers that had once been home to pretzels.
The students are savvy marketers.
Alex went on the school's in-house television station each morning to invite everyone to contribute, and the fifth-graders went so far as to produce a commercial that ran on the school station.
Between the $1,240 in cash contributions and $2,635 in yard-sale proceeds, the students had raised $3,875 by the end of the day.
"They have been very enthusiastic about this," Bethel said. "They cared."
kunderwood@wsjournal.com | 727-7389
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