Alden-Conger and Glenville-Emmons elementary school students learned about preventing the spread of the H1N1 flu with crayons and markers.

Students in the fourth and fifth grades competed in a poster-making contest. At 10 a.m. Tuesday, the top three fourth-graders and the top three fifth-graders at Alden-Conger Elementary School received prizes for their posters. The prizes will be given out at Glenville-Emmons next week.

Alden-Conger Superintendent Joe Guanella said they wanted to find a unique way to get younger students thinking about the H1N1 flu and being cautious and preventing the spread of the virus.

“When you think about that with the younger kids, the first thing that came to mind was we do the fire safety weeks and they do posters for that. They have fun and learn something in the process,” Guanella said.

Glenville-Emmons Elementary students also made posters for the contest. The two schools copied the posters and sent copies to the other school. Being able to see the posters from other students in a different school was a good way to keep students interested, because they’d be interested to see what the students from other schools made.

With the help of the Freeborn County Department of Health, a group of five nursing students from Minnesota State University, Mankato came down and talked to the students on H1N1.

The students talked about the warning signs of H1N1 and what students can do to prevent the spread of germs. The nursing students talked to the students about what they could expect if they came down with H1N1. The children could also ask the nursing students questions.

After the students made posters to highlight what they learned.

“It’s easier for them sometimes to put it in a drawing rather than words,” fourth and fifth grade teacher Sarah Attig said.

A lot of the posters focused on covering coughs and sneezes and hand washing: “They were really good, we had a wide variety of things on our posters,” Attig said.

Attig said all the posters from both schools will be hung up in the hallways at each school.

“We’re hanging all the posters up here in school. We’re just trying to hit hard that kids wash their hands. We have hand sanitizers that were put in everywhere around school. Wiping off the desks. We’re doing whatever we can to stop the spread of it,” Attig said.

The first-, second- and third-place students received things like blankets, T-shirts, stocking caps and socks. All the students who participated received a bottle of hand sanitizer and a sheet to help them start on their families’ emergency plan.

Fourth-grader Chase Christopherson made a poster of a person in the bathroom washing his hands with warm water for 20 seconds with soap.

Fifth-grader Zach Zabrocki also made a poster of someone washing his hands, and he also said there was a bottle of Germ-X hand sanitizer in his picture.

Alden-Conger has taken other steps to prevent the spread of H1N1. School officials have tried to minimize contact between students by keeping doors open to prevent contact with door handles and by recommending students use water bottles instead of drinking fountains.

In classrooms, students will sit at desks more often than tables to keep students separated, Guanella said. Teachers also will use wipes to clean common surfaces such as keyboards. Students are recommended to use their own pens and pencils instead of sharing.