At the silent auction, first grade teacher Alice Williams offered a Warriors playoff game watch party at Round Table Pizza to the highest bidder. At the Raingutter Regatta, Cub Scout troop leader Jason Wendling guided children to race boats by blowing air through straws. Mavis Ching presented a giant check of over $1,600 from the Goodwill of Silicon Valley to the Don Callejon School Community Organization (DCSCO), the fruits of a donation drive Ching led. Many highlights marked Don Callejon School’s 11th annual Spring Fling held on May 20. The event raised an estimated $28,000.
“We like to raise money because that funds all our activities throughout the year,” says Terri Muench, DCSCO’s fundraising director whose son will be graduating from eighth grade this spring. “We’re doing something for the first time called the ‘Super Staff Splash,’ which is like a reverse dunk tank. You throw a bean bag at a target. If the target is hit, water is released on the person sitting under. We got staff to sign up to sit under the sprayer for 30 minutes at a time.”
Tabling at the fair was Girl Scout Troop 60261. Girl Scout member Valerie Liang, 10, shared about the value of the Amazon rainforest. She referred to a sheet of paper with pictures of animals, such as the hummingbird, spider monkey, ring-tailed lemur and numbat.
“We’re trying to promote the idea of saving the Amazon rainforest from deforestation,” Liang says. “Some of these animals live only in the Amazon rainforest. So if the Amazon rainforest is cut down, these animals might become extinct.”
At the fair, kids danced and pranced around chairs at “It’s a Cake Walk to Science Camp,” a fundraiser to help cover costs of attending next year’s fifth grade science camp. Parents and school community members volunteered to make treats, such as strawberry pie, pumpkin muffins and gluten-free brownies. Sprouts, Trader Joes and local bakeries, such as Sweet Tooth Confections, also donated baked goods. This feature generated over $1,800, separate from the funds Spring Fling raised.
“A cake walk is a game similar to musical chairs where players walk in a circle around numbered chairs while music plays,” says Andrea Yip, organizer of the Cake Walk. “Once the music stops, all the players get to take a seat. We draw a number that corresponds to a number on a chair. The person seated in the chair wins and chooses from an assortment of baked goods. They might get either a whole cake or a whole pan of brownies or a dozen cupcakes.”
Joffrey Baylon watched his kindergarten son make bubbles.
“This is my first Spring Fling,” Baylon says. “My favorite game is the Angry Birds booth with the sling shots where you can shoot at the cartons. The kids tried that and liked it.”