In one Blair Oaks classroom, middle school students eagerly sailed homemade sailboats made with aluminum foil and Popsicle sticks, using straws to propel them through a tub of water.
Down the hall, a fourth-grade teacher quizzed her students on vocabulary about energy and fossil fuel as students told her the words and spellings. Behind the students, instructions for planning a vacation were written on the whiteboard, from shopping and packing a suitcase to calculating time and money.
In another building, kindergarten students did the "animal hokey pokey," swinging their arms in front of their faces as elephant trunks and singing, "You swing your big trunk in, you swing your big trunk out, you swing your big trunk in and you shake it all about."
Chalk it all up to a day of learning at summer school, which began June 22 on the Blair Oaks R-2 School District campus.
After 41 days of learning remotely due to COVID-19, students finally had a chance to learn in more traditional classroom settings.
After teaching remotely for so long, middle school science teacher Dannette Bax was nervous the night before summer school began. When thinking about the activities she had planned, she became anxious, worrying that students wouldn't enjoy them. But as soon as she arrived to the classroom and saw how happy the students were to be back in school, the nervousness disappeared.
"It was almost like the perfect world where the kids are just ready to come in, and they're so excited," Bax said. "They were just so happy."
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Bax said the students are so excited to be back at school that they never complain and always have a positive attitude. After minimal social interaction, they couldn't stop talking for the first few days.
"They were so excited that it was like, 'OK, we've got to get back in school mode a little bit,' because they just want to talk, but I was really excited to see the excitement on the kids' faces," Bax said.
During summer school enrollment, students in fifth through eighth grades ranked their class preferences and were assigned to a class based on these preferences. The classes include "Think It Build It," "It's All About Creating," "Student vs. Wild," "Escape Room" and "Around the World."
In Bax's science class, the students finally get to do hands-on activities after learning online for so long.
A typical day in this class includes free time where students play board games, color, work on STEM projects or read; a morning warm-up on Google Classroom; a team-building activity; a daily science lesson; recess, special classes including physical education, computers, library and music; lunch; and a STEM activity.
For Tuesday's team building activity, teams of students in fifth through eighth grades stacked cups into different sequences as the difficulty increased with each level.
For one science activity, Bax laid out supplies on the table such as popsicle sticks, clay, coins, coffee filters, aluminum foil and paper, and each student had a limited amount of money to buy supplies to build small sailboats.
On Tuesday, the students modified their boats and took turns playing capture the flag with them. With a pipe cleaner attached to the boats, they put them in a tub of water with a target above it and blew on the boat with a straw to put the pipe cleaner into the target.
The students have done many science activities so far, including creating and shooting off rockets tied to their lesson about SpaceX, Elon Musk and the Falcon 9, creating and playing with "ping pong roller coasters," digging for bones in an owl pellet lab, and participating in an egg drop challenge where students created a device that could keep an egg intact when dropped.
When Deanne Twehus' kindergarten class arrived to the classroom after recess, she dispensed hand sanitizer on each student's hands before they sang an alphabet zoo song and danced to the animal hokey pokey, songs and dances that relate to the kindergarten summer school's zoo theme.
During summer school, the kindergarten students practice cutting, pasting, coloring, writing their names and counting.
A typical day in this kindergarten class includes story time, recess, songs, arts and crafts, media time such as TV, lunch, recess, class activities, rest time, a snack and special classes.
Since her students are in an elementary school setting for the first time, Twehus said, she loves seeing them so excited for this first experience.
"You just really get a glimpse into the kids and what their abilities are what we can help them with when they come to school," she said.
Twehus said it feels wonderful to teach in person again.
"There's nothing like teaching in person, just having that personal interaction with all the kids and the kids being able to interact with each other," she said.