On Saturday, Feb. 24, Sanders Corner Elementary School will seem more like a community center than an elementary school, as it holds its 12th annual Winterfest, open for the first time to the entire Ashburn Farm community.
"We have a lot of families with young children who will go to Sanders Corner and a lot of families with children who used to go to Sanders who would still like to be a part of the event," Carolyn Brooks, co-chair of the event, said. "We'd really like to see more of Ashburn Farm involved."
As one of the few schools in the Ashburn area who has not seen its boundaries or enrollment change in recent years, Kendra Bittle, co-chair of the festival, said it made sense to open up the event to the community as a whole.
"If you are driving by, it's a day of fun for the whole family," she said.
THE FESTIVAL WILL be a combination of games for the children and silent auction. Brooks said that there will be more games and more obstacle courses for the children to enjoy than in previous years.
"There will be games set up for one set of kids, the older kids, in one area and games for the younger kids in another area," she said.
There will be two moon bounces for the children this year, with the smaller moon bounce safe enough for toddlers to play on. The festival will have 26 different games, some homemade, some supplied by local retailer Amusement Rentals by J&J, Bittle said. Volunteers will also run a pinewood derby and a cake walk.
For the derby, the local Boy Scout troop will bring out the pinewood derby cars they made and will set up a complete track. Attendees will then be able to pick a car and the Scouts will race the derby cars.
The cake walk will be set up like musical chairs where winning participants will have the opportunity to choose from more than 75 donated, homemade cakes.
"The kids love it," Bittle said. "They are always running up to their parents and handing off their cakes."
In addition to cake, the festival will also have hot dogs, pizza, cotton candy, popcorn and baked goods for attendees to enjoy.
THE SILENT AUCTION, which has grown since Brooks became involved with the festival two years ago, will include items donated by local businesses. So far organizers of the festival have collected items such as golf packages, bed and breakfast gift certificates, restaurant gift certificates, sports tickets, spa packages and weekends at the Lansdowne Resort. There will also be 12 themed baskets to be auctioned off, Brooks said, which were put together through donations made by parents.
"There are also art projects that were made by each class to be auctioned off," Brooks said. "They ended up looking very nice."
Sanders Corner's kindergarten class helped make quilts, the first-grade classes decorated step stools that could be used inside or outside, the second-graders made flower planters and the third-grade classes made five-peg boards for hanging in a garage or front hallway. Both the fourth-graders and the fifth-graders created mosaic items. The fourth-grade classes making lazy Susans and the fifth-grade classes made mirrors.
In addition, the school will hold a raffle where many of the items will be things donated by the teachers, such as student/teacher ice skating and an ice cream party.
"There will be two different auctions," Brooks said. "One from 11 to 12:30 and one from 1 to 2:30. We have to allow for all the parents to have the opportunity to bid."
WHILE ENTRANCE to the festival is free, raffle tickets will cost $1 and games and food will cost 50 cents each. All of the money made from sales and the silent auction will go to the Sanders Corner Parent Teacher Association. This year organizers hope to raise between $10,000 and $15,000, trying to top the $10,000 the school raised last year.
"Last year we were able to buy a reader board for outside the school," Mary Radford, the PTA president, said. "Which was a very, very costly item."
While the money has not be earmarked for something specific yet, Radford said she and the PTA have several ideas of what they would like to do with the money. Those ideas include supplying the school's leveled-text library, where a teacher can choose books on the same topic at three different reading levels to meet his or her students' needs.
The PTA is also looking into trying to fund closed caption televisions for Sanders Corner's classrooms.
"The newer schools have the televisions in their classrooms and we do not, being 13 years old," Radford said. "It provides so many different opportunities, such as getting the school news every morning. I think it would be so nice to have those for the kids and a lot of other schools have them."