I see your point Twisterdog, but I also think it is *extremely* important to have those furry mice and balls, etc. The animals' mental health goes down the drain if they don't have anything to do in their cages. I think blankets and toys are first and foremost the most important things. There's a ton of other things like paper towels, cleaning products, etc that are soooooooooo helpful too. But that also varies from shelter to shelter so a good idea as you said would be to ask the shelter. For a fourth grade class though, I think toys would be a fun thing for them to get. Also you could get some of them going on the homemade dog and cat treat receipes.

There's those donations that help the animals directly and those that help indirectly. I'm not sure if fourth graders would understand just how much those indirect donations help. Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit though. Its been a long time since I was in fourth grade