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GYPSUM -- Sydney Clements hopes Southeast of Saline's junior high cheerleaders can purchase new uniforms next year.

Emily Starr wants to go with the Spanish Club on a trip to Peru in 2013.

Jim Weller might want to attend the national FFA Convention or compete at the state level.

Heather Cleveland is enjoying an opportunity to learn carpentry skills by building a gazebo.

All of those Southeast of Saline students and more found that participating in the Prairie Patch Craft Show sponsored by the school's education foundation was a good way to attain their goals.

Booth rental paid by more than 100 vendors and concessions sold at the 13th annual event will also provide funds to underwrite art and music programs and student scholarships and purchase needed technology, said show organizer Cindy Mueller, special project coordinator for the Southeast of Saline Education Foundation.

"It's been full all day," she said. "We're very well pleased with the turnout. There are a lot of people walking out with packages."

Clements said she and her mom baked cinnamon streusel muffins, pumpkin bread and blueberry streusel for the cheerleaders' bake sale. Allie Beaumont, another seventh-grade Trojan cheerleader, said she made "no-bakes," oatmeal cookies and beer bread.

They both said they were pleased with how things had sold. The cheerleaders started out with two tables full of goodies, but by afternoon they had consolidated to one.

A big seller was Katie Jackson's peanut butter cookies.

"We had people say they were to die for," Clements said.

Starr, who was helping sell chances on a quilt pieced together by Donna Karber, of Gypsum, for the Spanish Club, said she plans to travel with Karber's granddaughter to Peru in 2013.

Chances on the quilt will be sold until the drawing Dec. 10.

Starr, a sophomore, said Spanish Club students also got together and made trays of cookies for the event.

She said the trip to Peru will be a "really good learning experience."

"The best way to learn to speak Spanish is to communicate with people who speak Spanish," she said. "I know the basics. I just have to get the language down."

Better than being in class

Weller, a sophomore, and Taylor Woodall, a junior, were staffing the Future Farmers of America booth, where they were selling items they welded together out of horseshoes and other donated metal.

Cleaning the used horseshoes in preparation for their rebirth as cowboys, welcome signs or other decorative objects took some time, they said.

Woodall said cleaning the "rusted poo" off the horseshoes and removing rusty nails took about the first three weeks of the two months FFA students spent working on their crafts.

Weller and Woodall agreed that working on the project was more fun than sitting through a traditional class.

"I'd rather be out in the shop making things," Weller said.

Weller became somewhat of an expert at removing nails.

"If they couldn't get nails out they'd hand it to him," said John Bergin, agriculture education instructor and FFA sponsor.

Bergin said the project offered a good learning experience for agribusiness students, who looked online for ideas for things to make and utilized all recycled materials in their crafts. They also had to market their products and set prices at the appropriate level, he said.

He said the only production costs were for paint and a few nails and washers.

Cleveland was among students selling chances on a 12-foot-diameter gazebo being constructed out of treated wood by the residential carpentry class under the instruction of Eric Denault.

"They had usually built sheds, and this year we thought we'd try a gazebo for something different," she said.

Members of the class will be selling chances on the gazebo until a drawing is held in the spring, she said. Chances are $5 each or five for $20.

The under-construction gazebo could be seen outside of the school building. The floor, railings and header were complete, and work recently began on the roof.

"I've learned how to use saws and tools I don't think I ever would have used," she said. "It's been fun. I'll be real excited to get it done."

Reporter Erin Mathews can be reached at 822-1415 or by email at emathews@salina.com.

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