Eastern Greeks invaded Jefferson Elementary School for a day of fun, all in the spirit of St. Jude.

Jefferson Fun Days, a day dedicated to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and Research Center, is where the third, forth and fifth graders of Jefferson Elementary School get a day of entertainment and a chance to meet some of the Greek members from around the community.

“I thinks it’s great for the relationship between Eastern and the elementary school,” said Paula Pogue, who has been a fourth grade teacher at Jefferson for 33 years. “It gives the students here a chance to meet and get to know some of the older students of the area.”

The event is broken into three different event areas: arts and crafts, scavenger hunt and bag tossing, and obstacle course and limbo.

Mallory Devens, a sophomore elementary education major, headed up the tie-dying area, “There are three stations and the groups rotate after every so many minutes.”

At the tie dying station, the students had the opportunity to make head wraps for the children of the St. Jude Research Hospital.

Students in each group made comments on how “cool” the project was. One student exclaimed “I hope they like this,” after finishing the headband.

“We are making 300 head wraps for the kids at St. Jude,” Devens said. “This gives the student here a chance to make something special to give to the kids of St. Jude.”

The sounds of excitement filled the air as the students unbundled their head wraps, sharing their finished designs with friends.

“It’s wonderful what they are doing for St. Jude with the bandanas,” Pogue said, “Out of all the projects of the last few years, this is probably the best.”

After the tie-dye station, the students and their Greek escorts eagerly move to the next station, which is the scavengers’ hunt and bag toss game. Upon arriving at the station the Greek student leaders split the group of about 40 children in two groups. The first group plays the bag toss game and the second group has 20 minutes to do the scavenger hunt before the groups switch.

For the scavenger hunt the students where to find a list of 19 things to find, including a person wearing Greek letters and finding out what two streets their school is located on. The students ran frantically from one college student volunteer to the next yelling out, “Did you drink milk this morning?” or “Are you wearing a watch?”

The last area seemed to be the most enjoyable area for the kids and volunteers: the obstacle course.

“My favorite station today had to be the obstacle course!” said Cole Drake, 10.

The course started with about 10 seconds of hula hooping, then tossing the hoop over an orange cone. Next the student would bowl to knock down pins until they were all down, then moved to the zigzag floor cart obstacle track where they had to maneuver around points in the track while sitting on a four-wheeled floor cart.

Jefferson Fun Days is a planned Greek Week and has been an activity for the last several years.

It’s focused on having a fun-filled day for the students of Jefferson Elementary School, dedicating the event to the kids of St. Jude and its research center.

Drake, when asked if he understood what the purpose of today’s event was, said, “It’s about helping the people of St. Jude.”