SPECIAL DAYS: PART TWO

More on the special days -- from Ruth Gorham.

 

“December was a fantastic month. Mornings before school, the children grouped around a piano in the hall or gathered on the center hall stairway to sing carols. Evenings, the parents worked on toys at school as did the children during the day. Mothers were upstairs sewing dolls and bedcovers or stuffing dolls and animals. Teachers worked wherever they were needed. Just before Christmas, we rejoiced to see truckloads of toys leave Graland to go to Denver fire stations for distribution to children whose holiday otherwise might be meager. During the 1930’s and the 1940’s, the Welfare Department provided us with names so that each grade could 'adopt' a family and provide each member with books, clothes, food and whatever the ingenuity of the children could devise. In the Little Theatre, Graland students proudly presented a moving play or tableau which often they had helped to write. The characters, as well as the enthusiastic red-robed choral groups, were costumed by Barbara Nunn with the help of mothers. Year after year, loyal alumni returned, filled with nostalgia, to experience anew the wonder of a Graland Christmas.

 

"Usually in January or February, Chester Preisser and the children staged an exciting circus for the parents, and with the first warm weather came Bicycle Day. The whole school watched a parade of decorated vehicles, after which we took picnics out on the prairie. Also, in the spring, with Chester’s help, the class built a pueblo as part of the scenery and used it every day for play."