Vanguard gets creative for kids’ Halloween event

MOSES LAKE — Spiders, cows, ghosts and the occasional giant chicken took over Vanguard Academy Tuesday for the school’s Halloween trick-or-treat event.

“We decided that it was time to bring Halloween back,” said Jessica Merritt, humanities teacher for juniors at Vanguard. “It used to get done every year at the Moses Lake High School … Obviously COVID shut everything down and (now) it was time to have some fun.”

Because of the structure of Moses Lake High School’s main building, the school’s traditional haunted house-style trick-or-treat event was limited to a single-file walk through one hall. Vanguard, which opened last year, has a more open building and allows for students to create a variety of experiences for little thrill-seekers.

“One of our teachers, Amy Utter, helped organize it at Moses Lake High School,” Principal Matt Stevens said. “She's our ASB teacher here, so the ASB kids wanted to pick it up and continue that tradition.”

    From left: Ashlynn Greene, Halle Hies and Devin Mackey start ad stop the music at the pumpkin walk at Vanguard’s Halloween event Tuesday evening.
  

Vanguard’s students are divided into four houses, one for freshmen, two for sophomores and one for juniors. A new house will be added next year for the school’s first class of seniors, Stevens said. Each house selected its own theme, Merritt said.

In the common area downstairs there were children walking around a circle of numbered paper pumpkins on the floor, overseen by Devin Mackey, Halle Gies and Ashlynn Greene, all dressed as cows. At every stop, the bipedal bovines would draw a number, and the child standing on that number won a prize.

“This is our pumpkin walk,” Greene said. “It’s kind of like musical chairs. They stop when the music stops.”

Upstairs, Alyssa Swassink and Selena Ramirez, dressed as a minion and an astronaut respectively, directed trick-or-treaters down a trail of spiders to rooms where other (mildly) chilling scenes awaited. The spiders were hot-glued to the floor, custodian Lorie Kreuger-Strohl noted ruefully. Houses Six and Four were kind of competing for the coolest haunted house, she added.

House One had a haunted house with a little twist, Krueger-Strohl said.

“At each table, they have a sensory bucket where the kids dig into it,” she said. “They dig their hands into the goo, whatever it happens to be at that table, slime or spaghetti noodles or whatever. And they have prizes inside. They're finding the prizes, so not only is it educational and sensory, it's a lot of fun.”

“We had just about everybody that participated in some piece of this,” Merritt said. “For some, it was the designing and planning, for some it was the actual putting everything up and together. For some, it was the cleanup to make sure that we were ready to go for tonight. So every kid had a part in this and took it. It was an awesome team effort.”

Faculty were stationed at the door with a little clicker to keep track of how many trick-or-treaters attended. By the end of the night 523 young people with costumes and some kind of collection bag had come through, Stevens said, not counting adults or others accompanying them.

The wider community pitched in as well.

“I would give credit where credit's due,” Stevens said. “Group14 is one of the new companies coming into town. We contacted them and they offered $700 for us to go buy candy for this thing. Safeway, also, when we bought some candy chipped in some for this event, too. So there were some community sponsors that that helped put this together. And not just individual student or staff donations; we had a couple of people from the community with no kids come in and understand that this was gonna happen and say ‘We just want to give some candy.’ You know, it's really nice to have partners like that.”

“I was so impressed at the end of today when everything finally came together,” Merritt said. “It was so cool to see. We (teachers) just kind of help. We don't take charge; the kids do it and we just kind of step back and go ‘OK, what do you need from us? How can we support you?’ And really that's what we do with their learning too. ‘How do we support you? What can we do?’ It makes a really fun environment here.”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.

    Alyssa Wassink, left, and Selena Ramirez greet trick-or-treaters at the beginning of the spider-strewn path to the haunted houses created by Houses Six and Four at Vanguard Academy’s Halloween event Tuesday.
  

    Naomi Lopez heads into Vanguard Academy for the school’s Halloween event Tuesday. She had a little trouble fitting her costume through the door, but made it in the end.