SPRINGVALE — It was a big, lip-smacking tasty maple weekend for folks visiting sugar shacks in York County. What started out several years ago as Maine Maple Sunday statewide, has morphed into Maple Weekend.

While most of the action was at 15 sugar shacks dotting the county’s landscape from Parsonsfield to Dayton and points in between, one area school took on their own maple project.

On Saturday, students at Carl J. Lamb Elementary School offered up tasty treats and a look at what they learned ”“ from tapping the trees to collecting sap and keeping records on how much was collected each day. Students produced a cookbook, a Springvale neighbor helped boil the sap into syrup, and the youngsters gave away samples ”“ there were pancakes with maple syrup, ice cream with maple syrup and little jars of maple syrup to take home.

Outside, teacher Bob Rothwell demonstrated the art of syrup-making, stoking a woodstove on which a stainless steel pan containing clear sap was at a roiling boil, well on its way to becoming one of Maine’s tastiest products.

Rothwell tapped some maple trees on the school property on his own last year, but this year, the project got a lot bigger.

And most classes in the school of nearly 600 youngsters took part in some aspect of syruping.

Students learned to identify maple trees and made a map of where they are on the school property.

Then, in February, when it was still cold outside, students in Rothwell’s English Language Learning class went out and tapped the trees.

“The students had a blast gathering the sap every day,” said Rothwell.

Students gathered the sap and then recorded how much the trees produced. A graph posted in the school, one of several postings that showed what students had learned, noted that during the week of Feb. 28, the trees produced 14 quarts of sap on Monday, 10.5 quarts on Tuesday, they skipped Wednesday, but gathered six quarts on Thursday and a whopping 21 quarts on Friday.

Rothwell said in addition to the trees tapped at the school property ”“ there were 18 in all ”“ they also tapped some at Springvale Public Library grounds and some other spots around Springvale Village. A local syruper, Springvale Sugardaddy, stepped in to reduced the sap to syrup.

On Saturday, there was a festive atmosphere on the school grounds, and inside, with games, face-painting, the demonstration, maple information booths created by the students and all those tasty treats. There was a PTO group holding a bake sale, Girl Scouts promoted their cookies, the pancakes and ice cream seemed to be a big hit, and there were apples, too.

Principal Deb Gaudreau said the project, from start to finish, helped kids tap into the curriculum in a hands-on way.

And the project fits in with how Sanford schools are approaching a new student-centered, proficiency-based learning model.

“They’re getting to show what they know,” Gaudreau said of Saturday’s events.

“It’s real world math and science,” said Service Learning Coordinator Jed Bloom.

David Yong, 10, one of Rothwell’s students, explained the process of drilling a hole and making sure all the wood bits are out before hammering in the tap and hanging the bucket.

Yong, along with his cousin Flavia Yong and students, Lidamarossy Som, Marlon Bernardo and Georgie Chap, helped demonstrate another step ”“ straining the sap through cheesecloth.

Asked for their input, each voiced their preference for how they prefer their maple syrup.

“On ice cream,” said David.

Flavia said she prefers pancakes, as does Marlon.

Georgie confessed he hadn’t tried it yet, but that was fairly early in the day.

Lidamarossy, well, he said he likes maple syrup as is, straight off the spoon.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 or twells@journaltribune.com.