Students power it up

POLSON — Kids and power tools — that combo was in full swing last Friday morning at Cherry Valley Elementary as Polson High School’s building trades class helped kindergarten and first grade students build sets of Cornhole platforms, a bean bag toss game for the school’s playground.

“Once a month on Friday morning we have 12-children clubs that get to do things they would not normally do,” Bill Starkey, school councilor said. “This club was called Moose Bags. The boys have already made the bean bags and the next step is to paint them.”

With a menu of more than 20 different clubs to chose from, the Cherry Valley students in the moose bags club knew when they signed up that power tools would be involved.

“We have an architectural plan for our playground,” Starkey said. “It includes exploratory games and this would be one more option for our kids.”

Closely supervised by the high school students, it was the first time many of the young boys had lined up an electric drill to a wobbly screw or felt the hum of a handheld sander against their palms.

“It was a lot better than I thought it would be,” Polson senior Sean Jennison said.

After all, working with kindergartners is quite the contrast to remodeling the high school’s modular classrooms, which is what the building class does on a typical Friday morning.

“I thought they were going to be shy, but my kids really wanted to do it,” senior Ryan Anderson said. “Maybe we encouraged them to do more building.”

High school building class teacher Daren Gunlock said he was happy to help out Cherry Valley, and it provided his students with a good opportunity to work with kids.

“We’re always looking for projects around town,” he said. “We’d love the opportunity to do more community service.”