Using boxes and boxes of toothpicks, scores of bottles of white school glue, lots of construction paper, plastic knives, compasses, rulers and pencils, students built toothpick bridges according to their own design.

The project came about after a Career Day talk by Mike Trello, a structural engineer, who gave out information about constructing toothpick bridges.

"I asked the kids if they were interested in doing it, and they said they were," Kelly says. "I don't think anybody had any inkling of what they were getting into."

The first thing students had to decide was whether to design their bridges to hold a lot of weight, or to design them to look like a real-life bridge. Kelly told the students to keep their eyes open for bridges they might come upon when they were driving around. "The basic idea for us was to make our bridges as realistic as we could," he says.

"Our principal's husband is a bridge aficionado. He brought in pictures for the students to see of all kinds of bridges in Illinois - from covered bridges to the Clark Bridge in Alton. There is also a wonderful Web site called Amazing Bridges of the World, that we looked at on the computer."

 In the sixth-grade class, which was the first of his three science classes to begin the project, some chose to build bridges with crossbeams and piers. Others had arches, some made suspension bridges, and one was a cable-stayed bridge.

Kelly worked alongside the students on his own toothpick bridge design. "It helped motivate the students to get going on their project when they would see me working on mine. Kids who got done early with their bridges helped the other ones out."

It was tedious work, and it took longer than the students had thought. Still the sixth-graders called it "fun."  John Pine says the whole idea was to make a bridge and have fun. Some, like classmate Clayton Buecker, say they want to build another bridge, "maybe during the summer."

The sixth-graders offer suggestions to others who might like to try their hands at constructing toothpick bridges. Don't use too much glue. Use flat toothpicks, and make sure you overlap the thick end of one toothpick to the thinner end of the next toothpick. Take your time to do the project. And use moist towel wipes to clean excess glue off clothes, particularly if you are wearing navy blue uniform shirts.

The toothpick bridges were completed just in time to be put on display for Grandparents Day. Sixth-grader Amanda Daniels says her grandfather, Dave Daniels, liked seeing the bridges she and her classmates made. He knows something about bridge design, she says. Daniels is retired, but still works as a geotechnical engineer at Hanson Professional Services, the international firm headquartered in Springfield that built the Clark Bridge across the Mississippi River at Alton. He was the senior geotechnical engineer on that project.