LAWRENCE -- Adults tried to answer questions like, "Why couldn't you save them?" and, "Where are they now?"

Children drew sympathy cards with messages like, "Mackendy, if I had a thousand wishes, I would wish for you to come back."

And a lesson on water safety at the Lawrence Boys & Girls Club led to an impromptu rescue simulation in the pool, leaving children applauding and some adults weeping when 12-year-old volunteer David Ortiz was pulled from the water in his swimsuit.

Across the city, adults and children alike yesterday struggled to come to terms with Saturday's drowning deaths of Christopher Casado, Victor Baez, Mackendy Constant and William Rodriguez. Regulars at the Boys & Girls Club, the four died after plunging through thin ice on the Merrimack River, shortly after leaving the club about 3 p.m.

Children at the Guilmette and Parthum schools, where the dead youngsters were students, were especially affected.

Among the noisy torrent of Guilmette School students rushing home after school yesterday, Ashlenie Calcano quietly handed a teddy bear to her friend before they parted ways.

"She brought (the teddy bear) to school because she felt sad," Calcano, a seventh-grader, said about her friend, who rode away in a van. Calcano had borrowed the bear for a few minutes of comfort.

"I cried in class today, too," she said. "It's just really sad."

Teachers and counselors tried to answer children's questions about the incident and console those who were grieving. An extra 30 staff members and counselors reported to the school to help students and teachers cope.

Guilmette Principal I. Alberto Molina said counselors "were busy all day" with distraught children, and several students interviewed after school said many of their classmates cried in class.

"We know that many of these kids are neighborhood children,'' Molina said. "They live around the school and some witnessed this whole episode with the ambulances and the rescue attempt."

At the Boys & Girls Club, volunteers from the Trauma Intervention Program, Family Services, Central Catholic High School and the Lawrence Fire Department joined club staff to offer help to the 260 youngsters who came through the doors.

In an upstairs room at the club, youngsters wrote out banners and made construction-paper sympathy cards for the families of the victims.

"Chris -- a heart full of strength, always smiling and caring," Raymond Nunez wrote of his late friend, Christopher Casado.

"May God bless your soul. We're sorry for your accident," Luis Toribio, 10, and Carlos Perez, 14, wrote on a banner dedicated to William Rodriguez. "How could you do something like that William. I will never forget you," another child penned in an unsigned message.

"Victor, a young angel full of smiles, Love, Hugs," another youngster wrote.

Jonathan Matta, 10, made a personal card for Victor's family, writing, "I will miss you, Victor. You will not be with your mom for Christmas."

Children joined in similar activities at Guilmette School.

"There were sad people crying in my class," said fourth-grader Valerie Colon. "We hardly did any work. We started writing cards. ... My card had a bunch of hearts on it and it said 'Rest in peace' and it also said that we would never forget the tragedy," she said, standing on the sidewalk outside the school. "We put all the cards in a pile and we're going to give them to the family."

Second- and third-graders at the school made two posters plastered with hundreds of multicolored signatures, ribbons, and pictures of the victims. The posters will be hung in the school's lobby today. Some students made cards that will be sent to the victims' families. All talked about their feelings.

Teachers were called on Sunday and told to come into school for an early meeting yesterday.

"We had some ideas for how teachers should handle this," Molina said. "We told them to make it simple, to tell them the facts but also to let the kids ask questions.

"We wanted to keep things as normal as possible," he said.

Molina said every homeroom teacher started the day by telling students "the facts" about what happened Saturday, so rumors would be kept to a minimum.

The children's reaction, he said, was "very subdued."

"The kids were very quiet," he said.

Letters sent home to school children yesterday encouraged parents to talk to their children about how they feel about the drownings. A letter from Schools Superintendent Wilfredo T. Laboy reads, "Be prepared for your child to do the following: claim not to be affected, ask a lot of questions, act agitated and angry, try abnormally hard to be good, withdraw, and/or have frightful dreams."

The grief wasn't limited to the Guilmette and Parthum schools.

Lizzie Espendez, a kindergarten teacher at Saunders School, wore a gold, silver and bronze angel pin to school yesterday.

She had brothers Ivan and Christopher Casado as students and knew Victor Baez because she worked with his mother, Thelma, at Hennessey School. So when she found out that Christopher and Victor were among the victims, the news hit her hard.

She said it was difficult for her to explain the tragedy to her class yesterday.

"I told them, those kids wanted to have fun, but didn't realize the danger they were about to encounter. I emphasized to them that when you are obedient to what your parents teach you, you don't get in trouble," Espendez said.

She said she did not focus on death, but on the theme of obedience and the importance of listening to one's parents.

Manny Reynoso, literacy specialist for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at the Leonard School, turned the tragedy into a lesson plan.

He asked his students to answer these questions: "What happened?" "How do you feel about the families?" and "What could have been done to prevent this?"

Reynoso said his students wrote poems, essays and even drew pictures to answer the questions. They also wrote letters to staff members at the Boys & Girls Club, to the victims' parents, the siblings they left behind and to the victims themselves.

Lessons in safety, and in handling grief, were also offered at the Boys & Girls Club.

"We are a big family and we've just lost part of our family," Markus Fischer, executive director of the club, told the youngsters assembled in the gymnasium. "If everybody helps each other out a little bit, we'll get through this."

Fischer, who joined nine other staff members in visiting all of the bereaved families yesterday, fought tears later when Lawrence firefighters conducted a simulated rescue in the club pool.

The session began as a question-and-answer period for youngsters curious about water rescue, with Deputy Chief Jack Bergeron and Capt. John McInnis explaining how a rescue effort works and what equipment is used. But they also faced questions like the one posed by one boy sitting on the floor: "Where are the kids now?"

"They were taken to the hospital," Bergeron said after a pause, "and from there, the results weren't too good."

Staff writer Yadira Betances contributed to this report.