Three 7-year-old students at a Maryland elementary school were hospitalized Monday after they ate a container of methamphetamines that they mistook for candy, officials said.

The alarming incident took place Monday at College Gardens Elementary School on Yale Place in Rockville, Maryland, where three youngsters went to the nurse complaining of dizziness.

“The investigation by detectives determined that a group of students found a container of blue items that they believed to be candy,” according to the Montgomery County Police Department.

The children briefly put what they thought were sweets in their mouths, but then spat them out and sought help.

The school nurse summoned paramedics to the scene who transported the children to an area hospital as a precaution.

All three patients have since been released home and are expected to be fine.

Although the container found by the children has not been recovered, investigators said that based on some of the victims’ toxicology reports, the substance the grader schoolers had ingested “may have been a methamphetamine related drug, such as Adderall or MDMA (ecstasy or Molly),” police said.

It was not immediately known where the children found the drugs, or who had left them at that location.  

Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones called the incident “frightening.”

“I hope that it serves as a powerful motivator for parents to keep having the difficult conversations with their children about the dangers of taking or eating unknown substances,” he added.