EAST MANATEE, Florida USA - Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Blast off! Students at Braden River Middle School are counting down the days before they launch their model rockets into the night sky.

But time is running out, and not all the eighth-grade students will have their own rocket to take home after the Night Under the Stars event March 2.

"We want every kid, if possible, to have their own rocket, because everybody is involved in building them," said Jack Colpas, co-director of Helping Kids Reach for the Stars.

Colpas, a retired middle school teacher, began the program with his wife, Kathy, three years ago to teach kids about science through model rocketry.

They provide a kit manufactured by Estes Alpha Rockets for $10, which is a little less than retail price, so students can build them with their teachers' help.

"The key to our program is that we include a video to show how to build the rocket so that a teacher doesn't have to be a rocket scientist," he said.

Colpas spent 10 years teaching at workshops for the Florida Association of Science Teachers, but he found that the time constraints kept him from walking the teachers through the entire process of building a rocket from start to finish.

"All the teachers left with great expectations and then it didn't happen," he said. "Why it didn't happen wasn't because a lack of desire on the teachers' part; they just have so much to do."

Raising money for the rocket program can be time consuming, too. That's the reason Colpas wanted to help Braden River Middle School students.

In a schoolwide fundraiser to sell coupon books, Braden River Middle School raised $12,000 to go toward science department expenses and the event, which costs $5,000 to $6,000. They lack $1,500 to cover the event and money to pay for the rockets for half of the kids, according to Nora Hyde, science department chair at Braden River Middle School.

The county allocated $2,000 for seven teachers in the science department, but expenses beyond that come out of teachers' pockets.

At the communitywide event hosted by Braden River Middle School, students also will have a chance to show off some of their science projects and interact with displays from the Museum of Science and Industry, Lowery Park Zoo and a star lab.

"Sometimes science can seem abstract for students, so this can be a hands-on experience for them so they can really take ownership of their learning," Hyde said of the rocket program.

The experience in launching a rocket seems to stick with the kids long after they set it off.

Colpas said a girl he once had in a summer program at G.WIZ Science Museum still had her rocket when she went to college to study science.

"Her mom told me that through all the changes that a teenage girl goes through with her room, the rocket always stayed," he said.

"There just isn't anything that will spark an interest in science like launching a rocket," he said.

For more information or to help with Night Under the Stars, call Braden River Middle School at 941-751-7080.