Santa Claus made an unforgettable appearance at Hager Preschool as students received a pair of pajamas as well as instructional materials in a drive-by event Thursday. Joined by members of Owensboro Fire Department, Santa waved to children from atop a raised ladder on the fire engine in the parking lot.
According to Hager Principal Sherry Baber, Thursday’s event was thrilling for the preschoolers, in part because so many of the students were looking forward to seeing their teachers in person.
“We’ve seen them virtually, and they do engage every day. But it’s so much fun when we get to see them in person and they get to see their teachers,” Baber said. “They’ve gotten to come to school in small groups occasionally, but now that the (COVID-19 case) numbers have been so high since Thanksgiving, we haven’t really done much of that.”
Hager started the school year virtually before returning to in-person learning on an A/B schedule. Baber said virtual learning was difficult for the teachers and students at the beginning because many of them had never met face-to-face.
Despite the difficulties with virtual learning, Baber said Hager students picked up on the details of their classroom layouts and learned their teachers’ and classmates’ names relatively quickly from their computer screens.
“We’ve been doing a lot of home deliveries of instructional things, so we wanted to do some of that now,” she said. “Some kids get weekend food bags we’ve been delivering every week. We just wanted to get everything they’ll need for next week together today. But the pair of pajamas was the big draw.”
Each pair of pajamas was donated to Hager by a church organization, Baber said.
Each student also received a Christmas story book and a candy cane to hang on their tree. Baber said most students had been working on homemade advent calendars at home by filling in Santa’s beard with cotton balls each day of the month.
“This was just another fun way for us to engage them and come together,” she said. “They miss coming in, they miss seeing everybody, so this is just a fun time for everybody to get together and celebrate the Christmas spirit, even if for a brief time.”
