Staff writer
With a Scarecrow Festival this weekend and pumpkins, Halloween decorations, and fall harvest arrangements popping up all over town, students at Peabody-Burns Elementary School got right into the spirit of celebrating autumn on Monday.
“You know, we used to do a fall festival event years ago,” curriculum coordinator Kathy Preheim said. “But somewhere along the way, we just quit doing it. When we began hearing about the Scarecrow Festival, I asked the teachers if they would like to get our students involved in that kind of project again.
“We developed some great ideas for a full day of activities and it has been a lot of fun for the students.”
Students moved to various activity centers during the day. Each center had a teacher or adult volunteer in charge and a high school volunteer or two as assistants.
Children in grades five and below spent 25 minutes on an activity in each of 10 centers.
While some learned about bees, animals, and butterflies from guest presenters, others stuffed scarecrows, made seed mosaics from locally harvested grains, made bird-feeders, construction-paper owls, and snacks. By the end of the day, each group had spent time doing each activity.
“They have enjoyed their day of activities,” Preheim said. “We got some ideas from the Internet and some from our staff and it has been fun to develop them and watch the students learn.”
The theme for PBES scarecrows is “The Three Little Pigs.” Students stuffed the character scarecrows and made bricks for a wall the big bad wolf will try to blow down.
Their work will be on display by the Peabody sign on Walnut St. It will be judged Saturday with other registered scarecrows.