Students enjoy fun, games and costumes at Kindergarten Fall Festival

The Poplar Bluff Kindergarten Center hosted its annual Fall Festival on Tuesday night, which serves as one of the two main fundraisers the school has throughout the year. The festival started when the center was still at the Mark Twain facility on Main Street and has grown into a tradition.

The fundraisers help the school keep experiences free for parents, according to officials. This includes everything from yearbooks and class pictures to field trips for students.

Principal Jessica Thurston said the school wants to keep those experiences free for families because most of their parents are young

“We really don’t want any of our kids to have to pay for anything,” she said. “It’s already hard enough sending your babies to us and not really knowing us at first, that we don’t want money to even be an issue.”

One hundred percent of the money goes to the students in one form or another, Thurston said. While most of it goes toward those experiences, last year leftover funds went toward new playground equipment. Thurston said this year she’s hoping to have some left that can go toward benches or additional equipment for the playground.

Thurston said she’s also hoping to be able to hold n some club days where the school has professionals such as bakers come in and teach students about what they do, as well as put on demonstrations.

“It’s just a way for us to give back to our kids and enhance their experiences in kindergarten,” she said.

These fundraisers also provide the benefit of offering a time for parents to come into the school, meet the staff and experience some of the other things going on there. Thurston said this is particularly hard most of the time with parents of kindergartners because the kids are already nervous.

“Sometimes I feel like we don’t involve our parents enough,” she said. “They’re busy. They have to work during the day. This is an opportunity for them to come in.”

Normally, the school sees a good turnout for the fall festival, she said, with about 95% of families coming out for at least part of the activities. This is the first big event of the year the parents are able to participate in.

The event included games and activities for the students, which each cost 25 cents. There’s was also a silent auction for parents to participate in with items and baskets donated by local individuals and businesses. The event also offered food, which was donated by the district’s food service provider, Chartwells, which tickets could be used for. Students were also given tickets throughout the week leading up to the event, so that if paying for them was a struggle for the family, they were still able to come and participate.

The event works to get the full school community together with teachers helping to plan, organize and run the games students can play, as well as helping with serving food or selling tickets.

“My teachers totally put this on, they should get all the credit for the awesomeness,” Thurston said. “It’s really just a very neat picture of the community we have here.”

Teacher Susie Ratilmann helped organize the event with the teachers and who would be doing what. The event had a lot going on, she said, and requires everybody to pitch in to make it work. The school district’s maintenance department also chips in to help by offer hay rides and the kindergarten center cafeteria workers help get the food ready. The fall festival serving as a fundraiser is a main theme for the teachers.

“We hate sending our kids out into the community to sell a lot of things, so this is a way to bring the kids into our school, but also raise money,” she said.

Ratilmann said the event has gotten easier to put on over the years because it’s become a tradition that everybody can plan ahead for and expect.

“We try to keep it affordable so it can be a family event that everybody can come to our school and enjoy, but also a little bit of a fundraiser for us,” Ratilmann said.