On Wednesday was Community Day at Manchester School in Windham, where fourth and fifth graders focused on helping worthy causes, including people, animals and the environment.

“It’s one of the best things Manchester School is involved in,” said fourth-grade teacher and Community Day organizer Stacey Sanborn.

She said each classroom in the school has a project its students spends the whole year working on and on Wednesday they lined the gymnasium with booths to tell other students and visitors what they had accomplished.

“It united the whole school,” said Dinah Aldrich who volunteered to run the hospitality and relaxation room for the organizers. She said she was surprised at the large amount of money some of the classes raised.

“It’s something the whole school can get behind,” she said.

Fifth-grader Jamie Richard, 11, quickly summed up why her class did volunteer work for the Preble Street Soup Kitchen in December.

“We wanted to help people,” she said.

CommunityDay01 & CommunityDay02: Manchester elementary students constructed and painted sculptures made from rolled-up newspaper pages in Ms. Blanchard’s art classroom.CommunityDay01 & CommunityDay02: Manchester elementary students constructed and painted sculptures made from rolled-up newspaper pages in Ms. Blanchard’s art classroom.CommunityDay03: Nicole McCallum, 10, and Mena Richard, 11, point to a picture of all the food and pet toys their fifth-grade class raised for the Animal Refuge League in Westbrook.CommunityDay04: Megan Prevost and Brendon Arsenault, both 10, show a graph of how many pounds of litter their class picked up from the playground on different days. Brendon said he thinks 16-pound April 3rd column was so large because it was after the snow melted. CommunityDay05: Brandon Palmer, 10, Laura McKenna, 10 and Courtney Maloney-Spiller, 11 hand out cards from Heifer International on the problems facing farmers in poor countries. Their class raised more than $2,000 from pledges for them to read books.CommunityDay06: Jamie Richard and Kassie Rich, both 11, hold some of the food they raised for the Preble Street Soup Kitchen in Portland. During December their class collected food and helped the other volunteers serve the homeless.CommunityDay07: Josh Enman, 9, and Bryce Wenger, 10 hold some of the dog treats their class baked to raise money for the Animal Refuge League in Westbrook. CommunityDay08: Maura Gallagher and Sam Shoberg, both 9, hold open a response card they received from a soldier in Kuwait that their class sent a Christmas stocking to in December. CommunityDay09: Jordan Sargent, 9, points to a picture she made that is part of a quilt for the Ronald McDonald House for the families of sick children.CommunityDay10: Meagan Jones, 10, points to a picture she made that is part of a quilt for Project Linus, which gives handmade blankets to traumatized and ill children.

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