Teacher at BHS Amanda Lyman is doing something very fun for her classroom this year. She applied for a grant to do something fun every month to collaborate with classmates. 

“This year I applied for a grant through BEF called ‘Gather Around the Table,’” Lyman said. “Once a month, my goal is to get all kids around the same ‘table’ to create a dish, complete a project, and learn how to communicate effectively with one another as well as to collaborate with their peers. For the month of October, we chose to paint pumpkins.”

Students were very creative with their themes, and each student was allowed to pick their own theme for their pumpkin. 

“Each student was able to choose their own theme for the pumpkins,” Lyman said.  “When the pumpkins are done we will set the pumpkins up in the library and allow other students to come in a vote for their favorite one.”

All of the pumpkins from each hour were placed in the library, and other BHS students were allowed to vote on them. The winners from each hour were Trenton Martin, Logan Buffington, Grayson Stauffer, Peregrine McGuinness, Riley Peterson and Zane Franklin. 

Second hour’s winner was Logan Buffington, who did a watermelon themed pumpkin.

“I’m pretty excited to win, and it was really fun,” Buffington said. 

First hour’s winner was Trenton Martin, who did a Scream themed pumpkin.

“After winning I felt very happy,” Martin said. “The entire time while creating my pumpkin, I felt as though it was good, but as time went on, I had a lot of empty space so I figured I’d add more to it.”

Lyman’s students had a great time doing this, and many said they would do it again. 

“I had a good time painting pumpkins and I had a lot of fun,” sophomore Dodge Douglass said. 

“If I had the chance to do this again, I would love to,” Martin said. “It was a great experience and it made me use a lot of creativity to come up with something that made sense and was very interesting to put on a pumpkin. I feel as though Mrs. Lyman should continue to do this project in the future as students will enjoy to use their creativity and art skills.”