Piñatas, Volcanoes and a Black Eye: Students Tour North America

Under any other circumstances, the sight of a child walking around with a black eye would be cause for immediate concern.

But on Friday at Farallone View Elementary School, teachers teased at how nice dozens of children’s (painted on) black eyes looked as they moved from one activity to the next at the school’s Continent Day.

One of Farallone View’s annual traditions, Continent Day centers around a different continent each year. Food, history and activities unique to the region are featured throughout the day.

North America was this year's focus. Students in the Canada room celebrated our northern neighbor’s rich native culture and history by creating their own totem poles. They also embraced the country’s love of ice hockey by getting “roughed up” in a penalty box. Volunteers helped to paint black eyes and other faux hockey-induced wounds on amused students.

As Farallone View site director Gwendolyn Rehling said, the event is fun but also educational, and aims to teach the history and culture of the continent they are studying that year through engaging activities.

“Every year we choose a different continent so that kids who are here six years get six different continents,” she said.

Run entirely by the school’s Parent Teacher Organization, the event incorporates arts and crafts, visual presentations and food, all supplied by volunteers.

While teachers and parents decked out in Maple Leaf jerseys informed kids of various aspects of Canadian life, students wandering in and out of Diana Purucker’s classroom sat among a makeshift redwood forest, sanding down segments of actual redwood trees to count the rings. They also had the privilege of mingling with Woodsy Owl, a special guest brought by employees of the United States Forest Service.

A few rooms over, parent Chris Bauman helped set off an orange soda-spewing volcano in the Hawaii room. In the “Pueblo” room, students delighted in authentic Native American food provided by another parent’s catering company.

Nancy Norris, a member of the Bay Area Garden Railroad Society, helped run a true-to-scale model railway system in the courtyard while children ran circles around it to follow the trains’ paths. 

Linda Herbert, a fellow member and Farallone View teacher, invited the society to bring a mobile garden railroad to the school for the event, Norris said.

To prepare her students for the railroad's arrival, Herbert read her students “The Boxcar Children” books in the weeks preceding the event.

Norris said that they designed a scavenger hunt for the kids to do while looking at the railroad with a focus on the era of “The Boxcar Children.”

“Everything in [the railroad] is true to that era,” she said.

Meanwhile, in the colonial era room, students learned to weave using a loom and make their own butter with help from parents and teachers. Parent volunteer Janice Pratt, who runs the with her husband Bauman and was helping out in the colonial room, said that volunteers showed up in full strength as per the school’s usual impressive turnout.

“We’ve got such an amazing participation level from parents here,” Pratt said, in between serving cups of homemade pumpkin soup and manning a makeshift hearth in the colonial room. “It’s not about ‘Can you volunteer?’ It’s about how many things you can participate in at once here. Our school is incredible.”

Second grade teacher Susan Kavanagh, dressed to the nines as a traditional colonial woman, agreed that the annual event would not be a success without the efforts of both parents and teachers.

“It’s really a group effort,” she said.

With children running eagerly from the gator displays in the Everglades room to the Mexico room, where they made their own piñatas and tortillas, the goal of displaying the diversity of our continent became evident.

“It’s a great way to bring our families together,” Rehling beamed. “We have a very diverse community here.”

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