By MICHELLE WILLARD, Post Staff Writer – Feb. 28, 2008 – 11:45 am

Hundreds of fourth through sixth-grade students from across Middle Tennessee showed off their creativity at the 16th annual Invention Convention at MTSU.

“The Invention Convention celebrates the creativity and ingenuity of young entrepreneurs,” said Tom Tozer with MTSU News and Public Affairs.

Students from public and private schools from the mid-state showcased games and inventions that may make life a little easier. And they were treated to a new song from Murfreesboro native and country music singer Chris Young.

Young was the guest speaker at the event and he is a former participant.

When Young was in elementary school he invented something involving toilet paper rolls, but he couldn’t remember exactly what it was, the singer said.

“I was always inventing stuff, period,” Young said. Like when he created a battery from magnets.

“I was caught up in making that for a week and then my dad told me it was already invented,” Young said.

The students who gathered at MTSU Thursday have the same inventive spirit, like Erika Smith and Rebecca Beard from St. Paul the Apostle School in Tullahoma.

Smith and Beard created a board game based on their team’s knowledge of pyramids called “Tomb Robbers.”

“One of the people in our class was studying pyramids,” Smith said “And we came up with the idea of robbing tombs.”

Other students had inventions like “Pocket Mittens,” “Broomop” and “Pooper Scooper 3000.”

Perhaps some of these students can use the experience later in life like Young did.

He credits his success to the education he received in Murfreesboro at Mitchell Nelson Primary, Cason Lane Academy, Oakland High School and MTSU.

His first public performance was a music class recital where he sang Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” He also credits his English teachers for turning him into a songwriter.

“If I hadn’t had the teachers that I had, the education that I had, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Young said.

Michelle Willard can be contacted at 869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.