To Danielle Hallissey, 10, a fifth-grader at St. Mary’s School in Temple, the mixture of wildlife and weather in the savanna “sounds like a lot of fun.” So much fun that Danielle decided she would build a replica of the savanna in a shoebox for her science class.

Fifth-grade students in Gina Ray’s class have been studying the world’s ecosystems and biomes for the last 10 weeks, and recently created their own ecosystems in shoeboxes.

Danielle’s version of the savanna featured toy animals, grass and a pond. “I liked the animals a lot. I think that’s another reason I picked this ecosystem,” she said.

Ms. Ray said her students were able to pick and choose any ecosystem they wanted, and had three weeks to work on the project. Some of the students brought in edible food for vegetation examples.

“I was very loose with them,” Ms. Ray said about her instructions to the students. “I let them decide what they wanted to do - I think they learn more from a hands-on approach than they do from lectures or reading.”

Julie Jones, 10, decided to build an ocean ecosystem, complete with fake coral and fish found at pet stores for aquariums. The bottom of the ocean floor was on display in the form of sandpaper.

“I just like fish a lot,” said Julie, who said her ecosystem took about a week to work on. “I wanted to make it look real, like the fish were under water.”

Ryan Dobos, 10, said she decided to build a rainforest because she thought it’d be easy to find blueprints. “I looked all over the Internet trying to find ideas,” said Ryan, whose ecosystem included a giant waterfall made out of blue tissue paper and cotton balls.

“I thought there would be a lot more ideas out there for a rainforest than there would be for building a desert,” Ryan said. “I saw this wonderful idea for building a waterfall online and I decided to give it a try.”

There are six major biomes in the world - grassland, ocean, desert, forest, rainforest and tundra - all of which were represented in the student projects.

“This is the second year I’ve done the project, and it’s been pretty successful,” Ms. Ray said. The student ecosystems sit above each student’s locker for display.

The solar system

In Virginia McIntosh’s third-grade class students have been studying the solar system, and Thursday displayed their own projects, which included replicas of the solar system, planets, satellites, mobile probes and rockets.

“I wanted to do a bigger project,” said Luke Miller, 8. “That’s why I decided to build the solar system.”

Luke’s version of the solar system was put together using foam and toy balls, various colors of paint, wire and string. It hangs above the ceiling in Ms. McIntosh’s class.

“I wanted them to have some fun and get a little creative with what they’ve learned in class,” said Ms. McIntosh, who has had students work on the projects for the last six years.

One student, Elyse Dobos, 8, Ryan Dobos’ sister, decided to take Ms. McIntosh to heart and built an alien she named “Ernie.” Ernie was made with foam balls and cardboard. He was black, green and red.

“I don’t know why I decided to build an alien, I just thought it’d be cool,” Elyse said. “I just wanted to build something that had a lot of color.”

Elyse told her teacher Ernie was from the unknown. She even set a trend with her alien, encouraging other students to build them for their projects.

The idea of building an alien didn’t appeal to Luke. “I’m not really into the whole alien thing - I don’t understand why people like them - I wanted to build something I know is real.”

dfearson@temple-telegram.com