DIGHTON ? City kids in snowbound western Kansas may have filled their unexpected no-school days with sledding and games, but the learning didn’t stop for youngsters in rural areas.

For 14-year-old Sheldon Root, it’s been an educational experience he couldn’t get in the classroom.

“I learned how to put chains on a vehicle,” Sheldon said.

He also helped his dad build a special trailer to haul water to the family’s cattle during the storm, and got a new chore: keeping the generator – the family’s power source – filled with gasoline.

With more than 1,000 of Lane Scott Electric Cooperative’s utility poles snapped in half, 16-year-old Eric Steffen knew his father, the utility’s manager, desperately needed extra manpower. So he and a friend, 15-year-old Isaac Levin, showed up at the Lane Scott pole yard ready to help wherever needed.

“It’s the thing to do,” Eric said. “You could sit at home all day, but what are you going to get done?”

Eric rose early to feed cattle at the family’s rural home, then headed to Dighton where he and Isaac were “gophers” for utility workers descending on the town to get the lights back on for rural residents.

The boys spent the week unloading trucks arriving with new poles to replace the broken lines and running errands to Beeler and Ness City. By late afternoon, the boys headed over to the high school for basketball practice, then back to the pole yard. They were heading home about 11 each night.

“Everybody is getting testy,” Eric said.

Students in USD 482 had been scheduled to return from Christmas break Thursday, but Superintendent Angie Lawrence made the decision to remain closed through the week.

“Everyone is in a survival mode trying to stay warm,” Lawrence said.

Power returned Tuesday to Dighton, nine miles south of Lawrence’s home, but rural Lane County was still in the dark Thursday night.

“You don’t realize how easy life is with electricity,” said Lawrence, who does much of her work on the Internet.

Her 13-year-old daughter, Morgan, helped her father during the storm. She left with him in the middle of the night to start up generators. Then she spent most days chipping ice, thawing water and haying the cattle.

Several other western Kansas school districts also remained closed through Friday, but students returned to school Thursday in Scott City.

After classes, a group of Scott City youngsters went sledding at the local skateboard park. Devyn Eggleston, 11, rated the post-storm fun “good times.”

In the northwest Kansas town of Quinter, USD 293 Superintendent Allaire Homburg was weighing wether to call students back to class on Friday. Power had been restored in Quinter on Wednesday afternoon, but safe travel through the countryside remained a concern.

Homburg said he hoped his students enjoyed playing cards and games with their families, found time to read during daylight hours and learned to look at hardships in a different light.

“That’s the way life’s supposed to be,” he said. “You have to look on the bright side of everything.”