Excitement was in the air for Lorrie Gomez’s Lakeside Elementary fourth-graders as two modern Glacier National Park red buses pulled up to their school Friday.

Their destination, Glacier, was the prize for winning the Junior Jammer Fourth-Grade Class Project competition sponsored by Glacier National Park Lodges.

Each student also received a voucher to take a summer tour on the historic red buses. Eighteen students were able to tour the bus garage where the jammer buses are stored in addition to visiting Glacier’s native plant nursery and Lake McDonald.

This is the first year the competition was held. It was open to all fourth-graders in the Flathead to encourage them to develop projects that encourage environmental stewardship and preservation of Glacier.

Dave Eglsaer, director of transportation for Xanterra, which maintains and operates the fleet of 33 buses, said the goal is to make the contest an annual one. It was open to fourth-graders tying it into the federal “Every Kid in a Park” program, which provides fourth-graders with free passes to federal lands.

“They put together a great project. We’re here right now in Apgar and the kids are excited to be in the park and we’re going to take them to the native nursery to do a presentation,” Eglsaer said.

For their project, the Lakeside fourth-graders created a concept for an interactive flannel, or felt, board. The idea was that park visitors — children specifically — could arrange cutouts of rocks, trees and animals such as beavers on a flannel board to learn about what contributes to the four “C’s” of healthy waterways: cold, complex, connected and clean, according to Gomez.

“They wanted it to be interactive,” Gomez said, noting that there would also be pieces such as buildings so visitors could re-create areas they visit such Apgar.

The project incorporates the students’ studies on healthy waterways for fish habitat drawing from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai story “Bull Trout’s Gift.”

“I do a lot in my class in regard to Indian education and Glacier Park is very special to native people,” Gomez said.

Gomez said her students were very excited to do their best job in designing the project using long strips of butcher paper rolled out in the hallways.

“They enjoyed cutting all the pieces out, arranging them and coming up with what they wanted it to look like,” Gomez said.

Fourth-grader Kaylee Ferron, 10, said her class was really excited when they learned about the win and the trip to Glacier was really fun.

“We looked at them [jammers] and learned why they were so big. [In the native nursery] we saw a lot of trees and saw a lot of plants,” Ferron said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or [email protected].