Dana Gray students celebrate El Día del Niño

FORT BRAGG, CA » On Friday, April 29, at Dana Gray Elementary School, Norma Trejo’s early childhood memories of school in Mexico bloomed in the play yard of the American school where she worked. Although Trejo arrived in the United States when she was nine years old, she still had vivid memories of the International Day of the Child as celebrated at school in Mexico. She recalled the day as an event drawing the whole community together to celebrate the children. The people the school children loved best were parents, friends, siblings, and teachers. Trejo realized that bringing this kind of celebration to Dana Gray made sense.

The Day of the Child is recognized worldwide, and countries honor it at various times of the year. The United States generally celebrates the day in the second week of June. Although Bainbridge Park has held Children’s Day events in June, the time and location don’t provide the opportunity for favorite adults in a child’s life to participate as well. Many children would have no means of getting to the city park. School was where children were, and most of them arrived by bus. Why not bring the community to it as well? Everyone would come together in the comfortable atmosphere of hands-on, culturally diverse activities outdoors. Not only would adults supervise, but they could also join in on the activities as well.

Before COVID closed the schools, Trejo had gained the approval of Principal Richard Kale to plan the event, and he suggested getting help from the school”s English Learners Advisory Committee (ELAC). With their help, activity station materials were acquired, but the pandemic brought the preparations to a halt. Once again El Día del Niño slipped back into an old memory. The very essence of the event had become a health danger. Celebrating what children bring to the community would have to wait.

Undaunted, Trejo set her sights on the end of April 2022, once school reopened in the fall of 2021. With funding donations from the Dana Gray Parents’ Club and the local Rotary Club, Trejo

and the members of ELAC collected everything they would need to make the day complete—a mountain of art supplies for the whole school to be used at eight different stations, snack foods, and enough volunteers to run the stations for the day. Fort Bragg High School contributed many student volunteers looking for community work hours. Why not be a kid again?

All the preparation and organization absorbed hours of time so that students would shift smoothly from one station to another. Activities needed to be interesting, culturally diverse, but easy enough to complete while maintaining student interest. All the students hung their own “Papel Picado” from the hallway ceiling to build anticipation. Trejo made sure the students knew what the day was for. “They know it’s for themselves. They know it’s something for them to enjoy, and they will be seeing different things. They were excited about tasting Japanese crackers,” she said. “Mostly,” she added, “it’s a gift to them.”

There was plenty to do. Kids could weave a God’s Eye, paint a pair of maracas, and play Lotería, a version of Bingo. Also offered were tug of war, chalk sidewalk art, parachute play, and marble skills. Even more challenging, students learned how to manipulate chopsticks by picking individual, diced sponge pieces out of a small cup and putting them into another cup. No one flinched when they were asked to use their chopsticks to move slippery dried pinto beans from cup to cup. No strays wandered off from any of the stations.

Trejo affirmed that this event was the only “first” annual El Día del Niño. She dashed from station to station, making sure people were happy, materials were plentiful, and parents and other volunteers were not overwhelmed. Teachers guided their classes around the stations, providing an organizational order to what would otherwise have been a swarming hive of excited children bent on doing it all. Perhaps the final detail, handmade fruit cups sat lined up on a table in the cafeteria for a no-wait treat. Sometimes, a good memory can become someone else’s as well.