A group of Salem fifth-graders decided they wanted to do something to help victims of the Haiti earthquake, surprising even themselves with their success.

Students in teacher Aly Davis’s fifth-grade class said they began talking about Haiti in social studies last week. “I heard about it on TV and I heard it was really bad, and I just wanted to help people,” said Lindsey Kimpler.

“We just thought it would be good to do something,” said 10-year-old Alex King.

When her students said they wanted to find a way to help Haiti, Davis called her father, who works for the United Way, for suggestions. He proposed a penny war, with the proceeds going to the Red Cross. The kids liked the idea and went to work.

“Last Friday we started getting all the buckets ready and the posters. We started collecting money this Monday. Most of the kids in the class have been telling all our friends about it,” said Bret Lachman, 11. “I thought we’d make $500 or $600, I didn’t think we’d make nearly as much as we did.”

Davis said her students put up posters around the school, lobbied their friends and family. One girl even asked her bus driver if she could make an announcement about the contest — the kids voted to call it Give a Penny, Save a Life — on her school bus. By Monday, the students had set up buckets for each grade level and another for staff, setting up tables to collect cash every morning the week of Jan. 25 as students came in for school.

Once donations for the day were complete each day at about 8:45, the kids would bring the buckets back to Davis’s classroom and count the daily haul. “I put them into bucket groups. They separate the silver and the bills and they separate the pennies, and then they total them all up,” she said.

They were stunned to find that donations were far exceeding their expectations. In just one day, they collected more than $400. “I’ve never ever seen kids so excited about something,” Davis said. “I can’t even begin to tell you, my room looks like a bank.”

The entire school started getting into the spirit of the contest. In a penny war, teams win by collecting the most pennies. Each penny counts for a point. But donations of bills and larger coins count against a team’s total, so those looking to sabotage opponents can gain an advantage by putting bigger bills in opposing teams’ buckets. “It’s a game of strategy,” Davis said.

Lachman said the classes were pretty competitive about trying to win the contest, “even though you don’t get anything if you win.”

On Friday, students brought back the last of the buckets. In just a week, the class had collected a grand total of $2,530.18. Davis said the students will be presenting a check to a Red Cross representative who will visit their classroom on Monday.

“I thought we would just get a couple hundred dollars,” 11-year-old Kimpler said. “I just hope it gets people their homes back, and all their food. And medicine. Counting it, and seeing how much we have, we’re all really excited to give it to everybody.”