HOOVER – Students at Inverness Elementary School celebrated the beginning of summer break with the school’s annual Field Day on Friday, May 18. IES Assistant Principal Amanda Hamm said more than 600 students participated.

“It’s a fun way to celebrate the end of the school year, get the kids outside and have a good last few days in school,” Hamm said.

Hamm said the event featured a parade, inflatables, water relay races, dry relay races, indoor STEAM activities, story time a demonstration from a rugby player and shaved ice as a treat.

While this year’s overall event did not have a specific theme, Hamm said each teacher’s class has the opportunity to decorate a banner. Hamm said student Bailey Harris, who was born without arms and abnormalities in his feet and recently received a custom designed toy car to help him move around the school, served as the event’s Master of Ceremonies.

“We thought it would be a good idea to give him the opportunity to get the day started for us,” Hamm said. “He was so excited.”

According to Principal Christine Hoffman, this is the first year that IES Field Day has featured the indoor STEAM events.

“We wanted to have an indoor activity, and our children love building and creating things,” Hoffman said.

In previous years, Hoffman said Field Day only lasted half a day. For the past two years, Hoffman said the event lasted a full day to incorporate more activities.

“We decided to make it an all-day school field trip,” Hoffman said.

According to Hoffman, IES Field Day incorporates many valuable skills that are applicable both inside and outside of the classroom.

“It involves our everyday actions like teamwork, cooperation and adventure,” Hoffman said.

Second grader Gabby Aniton said she had fun participating in all of the different games that were featured. Her favorite thing to do, she said, was to learn about math during the STEAM activities.

“You can learn about different kinds of subtraction problems,” Gabby said.

She also said she had fun working with other students to decorate her class’s banner.

“We put our teacher’s name and everyone in our class’s names on the banner, and then we put on flowers and smiley faces,” Gabby said.

Hoffman thanked IES staff and parent volunteers for all of their effort in putting the 2018 Field Day together for students to enjoy.