BROWNSBURG, Ind. — Not every 10-year-old can say they’ve been on “The Tonight Show.” But Isaiah Koonce can.

The fourth-grader at Cardinal Elementary School in Brownsburg, Indiana shared his ‘Snow Blower Shoes’ invention to Jimmy Fallon and a national audience.

His invention blows snow out of his way when he walks. The idea originally came from walking home from a friend’s house.

“I walked through the snow and it got in my shoes,” he said. “It felt all gross.”

There is a battery powered leaf blower in a backpack that Isaiah wears, which then feeds into tubing down by his feet, blowing out the snow.

It took him a couple of weeks to complete his invention, with help from his parents. His father helped with the physical assembly while his mother helped with the reporting and practice with public speaking.

For the past six years, the students in Allyson Smith’s class, Koonce’s class (with signed permission slips) have sent short video clips to “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “The Tonight Show” in the hopes of getting a chance to demonstrate an invention.

As part of a project last March called ‘be an inventor,’ the third-grader at the time learned along with his peers how to think like an inventor and watched videos on how inventors get ideas.

It’s important to learn by doing through projects like this, Smith said.

“I think we are building problem solvers, we are building creative thinkers, we are building kids who are going to lead the next generation and they have to be able to think outside the box and they’ve got to be able to be inspired by something,” she said.

Sarah writes for the (Indiana) Flyer Group.