One group of Parkside Elementary School’s parents decided enough was enough with COVID-19 shutting down traditional events for their kindergartners. After all, they had waited patiently to get to kindergarten and participate in seasonal celebrations like the autumn trip to Gallagher’s Corn Maze in Clark. But the word came that the trip was canceled.

Marsie Miller, whose daughter, Opal, is in Jennifer Rohrer’s kindergarten class, decided to step in and take matters into her own hands.

“She asked if her family could leave pumpkins in the grass at Parkside. Other parents from our class heard her idea and they worked together,” Rohrer wrote.

Instead of scattered pumpkins, the parents put up a miniature fence and a decorated pumpkin patch, albeit on a smaller scale than the  field trip. They created games, including a spin-off of bobbing for apples and provided snacks and stickers.

Rohrer said one of the kindergarten students shouted “This is the BEST DAY EVER,” while in the patch.

Miller came up with the idea, but it was her son Onyx, a fifth-grader, who provided enough of the big orange gourds for the whole school to come out to get one.

“It started out he was just going to do enough for the kindergartners, then he decided he’d do enough for everybody.”

Miller said Onyx, who is 10, has grown pumpkins for four years, getting better each year. His own patch of pumpkins covered an acre this year, she said.

Parents Chris and Madi Cooley provided snacks and Heritage Health donated drinks.

“Just when you think COVID is going to take the fun out of this school year, things like this happen and the parents and community step up. It really shows what a family Parkside is and I was so happy that the kids got to have a ‘BEST DAY EVER’ because it’s just what we needed,” Rohrer wrote.