When two students at the Sheriff's Youth Ranch volunteered to build monkey bars for Neveln Elementary, they had no idea they would get anything in return.

But after the bars were installed, Neveln Principal Jean McDermott brought the boys, Chad and Tyler, cards the children had made as a thank you.

"I've never had cards like that before given to me," said Chad, 15. "It was fun to read them."

The homemade cards as well as pictures of the boys building the monkey bars now hang on a bulletin board in a Youth Ranch school's hallway.

In October, McDermott asked Steve Solberg, a woodworking teacher at the Ranch, if any of his students could build monkey bars for an activity room in the school.

Solberg asked his classes if anyone would put off their in-school woodworking projects to build the bars.

Chad and Tyler volunteered and started working on them. It took them a few weeks and Solberg installed the bars over MEA weekend.

The monkey bars are a part of Neveln's Boost Up room, an activity room for kindergartners and first graders. The room is part of the Stimulating Maturity through Accelerated Readiness Training program, in which students do a variety of activities that stimulate the brain. The activities help children work on gross motor, fine motor, visual motor and auditory motor skills.

Neveln and Sumner elementaries are just completing their boost up rooms, while Southgate and Banfield have all the equipment for theirs.

Students at the Youth Ranch regularly participate in service activities, such as doing yard clean-up for senior citizens or helping with Eagles' events.

But Roland Halverson, program coordinator for the Ranch's short-term program, said Chad and Tyler's was different from those activities.

"What they did with the school was above and beyond what the kids usually do," Halverson said.