Third- and fourth-grade students rushed around Neveln Elementary School Thursday afternoon finishing posters and pieces of science fair projects while adult mentors looked on and helped out.

The science fair, formally known as the STEAM Expo, was held today, but students at Neveln and Sumner Elementary School worked with their mentors Tuesday and Thursday to finish projects and prepare for speaking to the judges.

Third-grader Hailey Schmitz, 8, was excited to show off her group’s rainbow project.

“We did learn how to make a rainbow, and we had different glasses and there was different stuff in it,” she said, referring to the different types of liquids in cups. “For our hypothesis, we had, ‘If you shine a light on different liquids, then it will make different rainbows.’”

Third-grader Kailee Aldrich, 8, worked with Hailey on the project.

“Doing a rainbow is kind of fun,” she said.

The girls worked with Fred Bogott, a retired physician. Bogott said he joined after he was approached about becoming a mentor.

“I have a scientific background as well,” he said. “I like working with kids, it’s a lot of fun. It’s fun watching their enthusiasm.”

“They’re young and they don’t know a lot of detail but they had a good time, and that’s important,” he added.

Bogott hopes to be a mentor again next year, and recommended it to anyone interested.

“They really should give it a go,” he said. “It’s fun working with these kids and you get as much out of it as you put into it.”

Bogott worked with three or four different groups, including three rainbow projects and one paper-airplane project. Hailey said working with Bogott was a good learning experience.

“I’ve learned not to keep on rushing to get it done so I can get to the fun part,” she admitted.

Science fair mentor and mentor organizer Catherine Haslag was happy to see the project working out so well, and the students’ excitement for the fair the next day.

“It’s been going really well,” Haslag said. “We’ve got a lot of really excited students involved in this project. Some of them I don’t know if they’ve done a science fair project before, but they’re very excited. They’re very fired up, as you can see they’re full of energy getting ready for tomorrow.”

Haslag, Peggy Benzkofer, Carolyn and Fred Bogott, and Richard Lemons worked together on the mentorship project, to remove barriers so more students could successfully participate in the science fair. Both Sumner and Neveln Elementary School leaders hoped to give the students extra help with the projects this school year through a program intended to pair students with an adult mentor to assist the students with their experiments.

“The mentors really enjoyed working with the students and having this experience,” Haslag said.

For Jim Burroughs, also a retired mentor, helping the students was a good way to help them get interested in science.

“For all of them it’s a learning experience, and that’s what this is about,” he said. “It’s trying an experiment and seeing what happens, sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. Just like life. But you’ve got to dive in and do it.”

Burroughs enjoys doing community service and when he saw the need for mentors, he didn’t hesitate to jump in.

“There’s a need for mentors because they’re trying to expand lots and lots this year, and they have,” he said.

Last year, the science fair drew about 10 students at Neveln, but this year there were about 50 students who joined in the fun. Between Sumner and Neveln, there were about 110 students signed up for the fair.

Two of Burroughs students, Angela Vasquez, 10, and Jazmin Veraza, 10, both fourth-graders, were working on their egg drop project Thursday. Angela said they chose the egg drop “because we thought that would be more interesting and fun.”

She has enjoyed working with her mentor and said she would join the science fair in the future. Jazmin explained the project.

“We, like, put it in a box and we put peanut packing paper and shredding paper, and we had a ziplock bag to put it in too,” Jazmin said.

“When we dropped it, it didn’t even break after one or two times,” she added.

Haslag listed many different experiments the students chose to work on, including egg drops, rainbows, working with plants and water and more.

“We have a wide variety of projects that the students have done,” she said.

Haslag said organizers have full plans for the mentor program to continue next year. Although some mentors were a little nervous to work with the students at first, Haslag said they got the hang of it after working with the students a few times. Since this first year was a learning experience, there are a few things Haslag said they would fine-tune for next year, but the program worked well in its first year.

Haslag hopes to expand the mentorship program to other elementary schools in the future, but for now they plan to stick with Neveln and Sumner.

“We would need a larger mentor base, a larger volunteer base, in order to cover all four schools, and we don’t have that right now,” she said.

Haslag encouraged anyone who might be interested to volunteer to be a mentor next year, and contact her at sciencefairmentormn@gmail.com to get signed up.

“We would love to have more mentors for next year,” she said. “And I would really like to encourage people, this is an idea that I came up with and I decided to do something about it, and 100 students have been touched and affected in this community by this project. I encourage people if they have an idea pursue it because you never know who it’s going to help.”

The science fair has an open house today from 1 to 2 p.m. at I.J. Holton Intermediate School that’s open to the public.