Reply To: End of year traditions

[Jonas Sauder]

We have a tradition of a year-end family/picnic day, held on one of the last Saturdays or on Memorial Day. The day involves students, staff, parents, and siblings living at home, whether alumni or preschoolers. The morning is devoted to some educational activity; the afternoon is recreational activity–both involve the school family.
Morning activities over the years have included…
a. Visiting speakers or demonstrations, such as a blacksmith who demonstrated crafting hinges and other small iron items; a search dog demonstration; the local rescue squad extricating a dummy from a junk car staged on the playground for that purpose; parent “show and tell” in which a number of parents demonstrated their occupation or some hobby or skill, returned career missionary telling stories, showing artifacts and photos.
b. Off-site mini field trip, such as a guided tour of local iron furnace ruins; a walk across the Susquehanna bridge and a presentation on the burning of a former bridge on that site in the Civil War; visiting several of the family homes to see their farming operation or antique collection.
c. Service activity–going in groups to various homes of widows, elderly, or shut-ins for lawn clean up or similar help.
d. Dividing into groups of mixed-age students and parents to complete a variety of small group activities involving a variety of skills and challenges. This activity provides great interaction between parents and students and touches a variety of skills from verbal to athletic, such as walking on stilts, writing a poem, calculating the volume of the school building, enjoying a children’s book together. I’ll post a list of questions used for one of these years elsewhere on the Dock.
Then we transition into other activities that include…
A mile run (before lunch)
Picnic meal
Afternoon games: softball, volleyball, games for children.
Other activities have included a hayride, having a local man land his para glider on the playground and showing us how it works, field events such as softball throw, discus, sprints, hay bale throw.
Overall, the day provides joint experiences for students and parents, multi-faceted learning activities, and some predictable traditional activities over time.