More than $18,000 worth of grants have been awarded among seven schools in the Oak Harbor School District to support about 850 students in learning creatively.

The district hosted a special breakfast where people in the community came and donated money to fund the grants. On Oct. 27 the Oak Harbor Education Foundation’s Applied Learning Grant Selection Committee met and sorted through 16 applications. They picked 13 applications to award money to ranging from $300 to $2,000. The applications submitted by the teachers focused on projects that help students learn about real world situations.

On Nov. 17, state representatives Barbara Bailey and Norma Smith attended an awards ceremony at Olympic View Elementary School to hand out the grant money to a few of the teachers.

Third-grade teacher Janet Sodano was given $1,275 to launch her project, “The Most Important Meal of the Day.” Sodano hopes to teach kids about healthy nutrition and will bring in several sources like a Navy hospital dietitian to speak with her class. Additionally, the kids will learn about marketing and packaging food products from community business representatives from the Whidbey News-Times and Safeway.

“We emphasize to students that breakfast is the most important meal of the day all the time,” Sodano said, “because it’s the meal that jump starts their day.”

Fourth-grade teacher, Amy Coleman, who was also awarded a grant, said her goal is to emphasize that math is fun. She was awarded $1,000 to launch an Abacus Club. Community volunteers will come in and teach fourth-graders how to use an abacus and then those students will teach third-graders.

“We’re going to spread the wealth around the school,” Coleman said. “We’re very excited.”

Other cash was awarded to support ventures like theater productions at the high school, revamping the entrance of Midway High School, a rock-climbing field trip and TV show production.