Great Salt Bay School’s eighth grade hosted the school’s annual Harvest Fair on Saturday in the school gymnasium. The festival is the major fundraiser for the eighth grade class trip to Boston. The students ran all events, with adult assistance.
A silent auction and many games filled the gym. Ball toss, clown toss and other games of skill were run by jovial upperclassmen. A huge inflated bouncing castle captured the attention of the younger visitors. Tickets for the various games were sold at the door, and like country fairs everywhere, each game took a certain number of tickets to play.
Fresh baked goods, hot breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs and popcorn were for sale at reasonable prices. The space was filled with the aroma of popcorn, which led one visitor in from the outside.
“I was wondering if the fair was in the cafeteria or the gym, but the popcorn led me right in here,” said Paul Moore. “This looks like a lot of fun but I need popcorn first.”
Eighth grade students designed and built a particularly colorful haunted house. They spent hours hanging draperies and setting props, then doing gruesome make-up on each other so they could offer a properly terrifying welcome to their “House.”
Severed body parts seemed the favorite prop for the zombies, while a vampire maiden sat patiently waiting for Dracula to rise in her cemetery.
The Library at Great Salt Bay held the last day of its Autumn Book Sale simultaneously with the Harvest Fair. Tables with new favorites and classics were set in the sunny room according to age and reading levels. Patrons of the Harvest Fair stopped in for a quiet moment to buy books.
“Students have been scoping out the books all week,” said Librarian Sharon Matthews. “I expect that parents will be making some purchases for the holidays.”
Proceeds from the fair help offset the cost of the eighth grade’s annual graduation trip to Boston, which the students will take in the spring. These student fundraising events help to reduce the cost for all students, so that everyone in the class is able to travel together.
“Community support is the most important thing that comes from these events,” said visiting grandparent Amy Rawlings. “When you see the kids working so hard for everyone to get to go on the trip, it makes us happy to support them.”
