Immediately after Patricia Murray finishes roll call of the 23 fifth and sixth grade students, the art room goes from silent to humming, from organized to covered in plaster.

It's time to build castles.

With a grant from the Golden Tornado Scholastic Foundation, Murray organized an after-school art program at Center Avenue Elementary School that students and parents enthusiastically attend — even on a Friday afternoon.

"They want to come in on Saturday," said Murray, the art teacher at Center and Northwest elementary schools. "I just can't express in words how much they love this."

Murray volunteers to teach the class, and the creative teaching grant pays for supplies. Pam Williams, of the association, said the grant given to Murray is one of the largest distributed.

Friday's supplies were recyclables and plaster strips. The students used empty paper cases, old paper towel centers and cones that formerly held reams of yarn to fashion their fantasy castles.

Zackery Rodgers, fifth grade student, designed a cardboard home fit for a king, and a dragon.

In the previous after-school art sessions, he designed a papier-mâché dragon that currently is on display in the school library. It will soon need a new home, he said.

When the 4-foot-high castle is finished, Kayla the Pink Dragon will take residence in Skyscraper Castle. An imaginary king will live on the second story, which Friday resembled an empty box labeled "Eggs."

While he is a fine architect, Zackery said he didn't spend arduous hours creating blueprints for his castle.

"I was going to make it just to my waist," he said.

As he started piecing it together with the hot glue gun the day before, he changed his mind and made it tall enough so the lookout post is level with the top of his shoulders.

All the students met Thursday with Murray. She explained to them the defensive purpose of many of the structural features common to castles.

Round towers, once Quaker Oats containers, were on the corners of walls to deflect anything catapulted at them.

Battlements, the cutouts at the top of walls, gave soldiers something to hide behind while loading their weapons and a spot to peek out from when they were ready to fire. Keeps were perched above the castle curtain in the center of the roof so the lookout could see the kingdom.

At the back of the room, Murray said, recyclables were piled as high as the window across the wall. When the students returned Friday to add plaster, only two shoe boxes of supplies remained.

Murray hung some photograph examples of real castles on the blackboard.

Alexis Kline, Veronica Kummer and Kelsey Andler, all sixth grade students, modeled their castle after a picture of Sigmaringen Castle in Germany.

Naming it something a little easier to pronounce, the girls called it E Castle because each of their names contains that vowel.

The front door was an 8-inch "E" hinged on the bottom so it could act as a drawbridge. In front of the keep was a three-dimensional E, and Veronica said they planned a cloth flag E to flutter in the classroom draft.

Kelsey, as group leader, designed ways to turn plastic spice containers into round towers of the castle.

A.J. Barnett and Eli Seekford, sixth graders, made a keep that had a striking resemblance to a box from a bar of Dove soap.

"It's a command post,"A.J. said.

He can point visitors to the living quarters, the storage area and the defense mechanisms like the best real estate agent dealing with a hot castle property.

Khadijah Townsend, fifth grade student, said the key to a good castle is its structural integrity, provided by a lot of hot glue. She and classmate Ashley Pints helped each other build individual castles.

Khadijah also is willing to give tours of her castle. She'll identify the spot for a drawbridge, the lookout windows "for safety" and the future home for her dragon.

Maria McAvoy said the selling point of castles is detail. She worked alongside Kara Hyatt as they each started draping on plasters. The two fifth grade girls are cousins and have been watching Kara's mother make a doll house.

That has inspired Maria to think about cutting out small furniture and people to fit inside the stained-glass windows, to scrunch up blue tissue paper to transform into a moat and to make a chimney. She has grander ideas she's not sure she'll have a chance to complete in the limited time, like a stone patio and a working drawbridge. Some of the amenities, like a satellite dish, aren't even found on the medieval versions.

Kara said a few hours on Friday afternoon getting her hands sloppy was rather relaxing to the week of state testing.

"We're finally done with PSSA testing,"Maria agreed. She said as a reward for hours of written and multiple-choice tests in math and reading, the class watched "Apollo 13" and ate popcorn Friday afternoon before going to the art activity.

"I just can't wait until it's done," Maria said.

After the students let the plaster dry Friday, they will paint the castles during two days in April. In the meantime, third and fourth grade students will meet and work on their own art projects.

Dried castles will get to go home. At the same time, dragons will leave their library lairs and across the Center Avenue kingdom will find recyclable homes.