GRE students skate to stay fit thanks to PTO

Chil­dren love to skate – roller blades or old-fashioned 4-wheel skates, it doesn’t mat­ter. Tell them there’s a skate party at the Sun­bury Skate Club and they’ll show up. In fact, give ele­men­tary age stu­dents roller skates almost any day of the week, any time of the day and they will put them on and skate until they are exhausted.

But what if there’s no party at the skate club? Skat­ing is still a healthy activ­ity, right? Wouldn’t it be an ideal activ­ity to put chil­dren in skates dur­ing school hours while in Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion class?

That’s what Gen­eral Rose­crans Ele­men­tary School Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion teacher Jody Greiger has done, thanks to finan­cial and vol­un­teer help from the GRE Par­ent Teacher Organization.

Galena’s Easter Egg Hunt continues to be very popular

A huge crowd came out for Galena’s annual Easter Egg Hunt on a beau­ti­ful spring day and the chil­dren were as eager as ever to find more than 2,000 Easter eggs, candy, coins, and lots of treasure.

Chil­dren from infants to 10 year-olds had fun hunt­ing eggs and even more fun dis­cov­er­ing the 10,000 pieces of candy and pen­nies inside. Chil­dren ages 5–10 also par­tic­i­pated in a coin and candy toss and infants to 10 year old chil­dren each received a toy.

BW grad Katherine Bretz studying abroad in Leipzig, Germany

Kather­ine Bretz, a 2009 Big Wal­nut High School grad­u­ate, and daugh­ter of Karen and Tim Bretz of Sun­bury, is spend­ing a semes­ter in Leipzig, Ger­many, as part of a study-abroad pro­gram. She is a double-major stu­dent in the Hon­ors Col­lege at Kent State Uni­ver­sity, in the dis­ci­plines of Vocal Per­for­mance and Ger­man Lan­guage.
She will be study­ing voice at the Uni­ver­sity of Music and The­atre, Leipzig, which was founded in 1843 by Felix Mendelssohn as the Con­ser­va­tory of Music. It is the old­est uni­ver­sity school of music in Germany.

Big Walnut Spring Variety Show Friday at 7p.m. in HS Auditorium

Almost 40 Big Wal­nut High School stu­dents will take the stage tomor­row evening (Fri­day, April 12) to show off their tal­ents in their annual Spring Vari­ety Show.

This year’s show attracted more stu­dents than in past years, promis­ing 24 acts and a host of tal­ent worth lin­ing up at the door to see.

The show begins at 7 p.m. and admis­sion is only $3 at the door.

Teen of The Week Erin Wampler loves to help people, play music, read

Erin Wampler loves to help peo­ple, play music and read.

“It is my favorite thing,” Erin said of read­ing. She’s tak­ing an advanced place­ment lit­er­a­ture course at Big Wal­nut High School, and among her assign­ments was read­ing George Orwell’s 1984.

“We had a month or two to read the whole thing, and I did it in four or five weeks because I got sucked into it. I had to have my friends take my book, so I wouldn’t get too far ahead,” Erin said. She also praised My Sup­plier, the debut novel of fel­low stu­dent Sarah Stefaniak.

“Erin stands out as an indi­vid­ual,” said Mike Ruark, her lit­er­a­ture teacher. “She does things inde­pen­dently, and it’s a plea­sure to see a stu­dent who’s con­fi­dent in what she’s doing. She’s a plea­sure to have in class, and an all-around great stu­dent and hard worker.”

Molly’s Dresses: Buy, Sell or Rent at consignment shop

Prom is just around the cor­ner. If you are a Big Wal­nut High School junior or senior (girl, of course) you’re look­ing for a prom dress; and if you grad­u­ated any­time dur­ing the past few years you’ve prob­a­bly got a prom dress hang­ing in a closet wait­ing to go out of style, then hope­fully come back in fash­ion some­day as a retro-style.

But the prob­lem is, how do you put the two together — the need for a prom dress, and the need to recy­cle last year’s (or the year before last year’s, or the year’s before that) prom or party dress?

Molly Drayer of Molly’s Flow­ers & More at 14 East Cherry Street in Sun­bury might just have the answer — Molly Dresses (For Girls Only).

Romeo and Juliet: Got a minute?

For those who do not enjoy clas­si­cal Eng­lish drama, plays by the Bard of Avon and his late 16th and early 17th cen­tury con­tem­po­raries like Fran­cis Bacon and Christo­pher Mar­lowe, an evening’s pro­duc­tion of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet might seem to drag on for hours and hours … and hours … and hours.

That was not a prob­lem for Big Wal­nut High School stu­dents in Mary Jane Carr’s Eng­lish Class. They decided to dis­card the fluff and get down to the meat and bones of the Bard’s clas­sic love story about an ill-fated cou­ple that turns tragic, all because the Montague’s and Capulet’s could not bury the hatch­ets of past animosities.

Graduation is near; Scholarship time is here

Spring is here. The weather is get­ting warmer (we hope); flow­ers will soon bloom; trees will bud and blos­som … and Big Wal­nut High School seniors will be going online, scram­bling for last-minute schol­ar­ship funds to help pay for next year’s trip to college.

What many of them may not know, is that there’s a source of schol­ar­ship funds they can apply for by sim­ply stop­ping at the high school guid­ance office; and those funds are the result of the gen­er­ous efforts of mem­bers of their own community.

Any Big Wal­nut senior or Big Wal­nut grad­u­ate cur­rently enrolled in a col­lege or uni­ver­sity is eli­gi­ble to apply for one of the many schol­ar­ships admin­is­tered by the Big Wal­nut Edu­ca­tion Foundation.