With two friends watching, Joi Parker folded a sheet of white paper once, twice, then a third time until it began to resemble an item typically not allowed in school: a paper airplane. "OK, perfect," Joi said as she finished. "Now we have to color it." At Hillpoint Elementary School, students clamor to use the science lab, where learning is always interactive. Joi and her classmates, for example, were told to find out whether the amount of surface area on a paper airplane affects how far it will fly.

Teacher Kimberly Nierman could have assigned the task in her own classroom, with students sitting at their desks. Instead, she decided to bring her fourth-graders to the lab, an unusual offering in Suffolk.

"I don't know of another elementary school that has a dedicated science lab," Nierman said. "It kind of gives them a sense of excitement, being able to get out of their normal classroom."

Hillpoint Elementary opened this fall with a two-story floorplan and colorful classrooms with the latest technology. When Principal Ronald Leigh realized he had an extra classroom, he decided it would make for a good lab space, Nierman said. She ordered supplies, got the room in order and now handles daily upkeep.

Teachers organize "science circus" days in the lab, allowing students to rotate through a set of experiments based on whatever unit they're working on. They often put special projects on display for other classes to see.

"It makes a huge difference," Nierman said. The children are "able to get in here and explore and ask questions and answer their own questions."

Her students have watched donated chicken and quail eggs hatch, then cared for the newborns. They've also dug through pellets of owl "throw-up" to find mouse bones.

"I think it's cool," said Kai Lakes, 9. "We can do unusual stuff."

Perhaps most exciting is the school's collection of pets - a bearded dragon named Cap'n Jack, a leopard gecko named Sparky and a slew of fresh-water fish.

"It's all new to me," said 9-year-old Amesha Miller. "I've never been around this many animals before."

Taking a break from the airplane experiment, Amesha peered into an incubator where eggs hardly bigger than Hershey's Kisses were cracked in two. In the corner lay a tiny, fuzzy surprise.

"He hatched!" Amesha said. "He was still in the egg yesterday."

The quail baby, the last of 12 hatchlings born a week ago, couldn't lift its head and died a day later. The survivors will go to a farm once they get older. For now, they're corralled in a cardboard box, warmed by a heat lamp.

Amesha's favorite of all the critters is Sparky, she said. The students voted on the reptile's name and occasionally watch as it chases meals of live crickets.

"He's like a little puppy dog with his tail wagging," Amesha said.