On Tuesday, John Small Elementary School held the fourth-annual Wise Guys Invention Convention.

Students showed off weeks of hard work, with the fourth-graders debuting their own inventions, and the fifth-graders presenting research projects on various toys and games. The theme for the event was “Toyland.”

A variety of inventions were on display for the Invention Convention — from Hooked On This (H.O.T.) Spot, a cover to protect clothes from catching on fishing hooks; to a Dog Feeder Station, in which a pet stands on a lever and opens a compartment with bowls; and a Cool Hat, which comes with an attached fan and mister to keep cool on hot days.

Other students, family and friends were invited to the school to take a walk-through of the finished products.

“Every year the students’ ideas amaze me,” teacher Kathryn Bryant said. “It seems when we start this unit that everyone’s invention idea is a robot that will magically solve all problems. It takes a lot of thought and time for my students to develop ideas outside of that robot box, but they always come up with something unique.”

Bryant said she enjoyed all of the inventions, but one that stood out to her is Addison Miller’s Bad Breath Sprayer. Once implanted into a person’s tooth, a touch of the tongue will cause it to spray freshener into the mouth.

Fourth-grader Wayland Mitchell said he was inspired to create H.O.T. Spot after an incident when his mother got her sweater caught on a fishing hook. The hook ruined her sweater, and finding a solution sparked Mitchell’s creativity.

“I hadn’t invented anything, but I’d done the wax museum,” Mitchell said, referencing another Wise Guys project in December.

Jocelyn Botello, also a fourth-grader, invented Keitai Stand, which gives people a way to store their phones at home without losing them. “Keitai” is a Japanese term meaning “portable.”

The stand is a picture frame with a pouch in the back to hold a cellphone, with magnets and a suction cup to hold it to the refrigerator.

“My baby brother always takes my mom’s phone. … She also loses her phone a lot,” Botello said. “I thought about it a long time, and I thought, ‘What would be a good place to put it?’”

Bryant said the Invention Convention is a good way each year to promote science, technology, engineering and math skills, also known as STEM.

“My fourth-grade inventors learned how to brainstorm and exercise creative thinking. They had to create original designs of their prototypes and actually build them. They practiced strong presentation skills as they explained their ideas in writing and learned how to create a visually appealing display,” she said.

“The fifth-graders researched toy inventions, and they, too, exercised a combination of research and presentation skills. They learned how to create infographics for their display boards and cite references correctly.”