Mackenzie Stahlman, Abby Rickard, Riley Peterson, Tosha Wise and Taylor Felix complete a challenge. (Photo by Addy Fawcett/Student contributor)
By ADDY FAWCETT
Student contributor
Christmas time at expresses Cranberry High School’s love for the holiday season and the community with a Holiday Madness Tournament, Christmas Jars and its annual life-sized board game.
Micheal Poff, Cranberry’s music and band teacher, set up a Holiday Madness Tournament, which is a competition of Christmas songs. Popular Christmas songs are put into a bracket and voted on by staff and students. This year’s winner is “Last Christmas” by Wham!
Adding to the singsong fun, students showed compassion by participating in Cranberry’s Christmas Jar Project. Jars were placed in every Language Arts classroom where students could donate spare change. Kristin Sandrock and Lori Corbett started this project 12 years ago when Corbett read the book Christmas Jars and suggested to Sandrock that her 7th grade English classes should not only read the book but know the reason why the tradition takes place. The money collected goes to families in the community that are in need of Christmas cheer. This will be the 13th year Cranberry is participating in this tradition.
An annual favorite is Cranberry High School’s life-size Christmas board game, created and run by Trisha Dixon’s Journalism class. Students were excited to play this year’s game: Christmas Clue! All around the school were Christmas-themed mini games for teams to play, along with character-themed rooms, such as Mrs. Claus and Buddy the Elf, where teams could earn clues. Teams were tasked to figure out who stole Christmas, from where, and what means of transportation was used in the heist.
Christmas at Cranberry is filled with excitement and smiles spreading little pieces of joy around the school.
Addy Fawcett is a student at Cranberry High School and a member of Cranberry Chronicles, the school’s journalism/publications class.
