'Mud Dogger' event provides muddy fun, supplies for teachers

Photos by Randy Moll Students from Gentry’s Intermediate School enjoyed getting out of the classroom and into the mud during the second annual "Mud Dogger" event on the school playgrounds. The event was a PTO fundraiser to help teachers pay for needed school supplies.
Photos by Randy Moll Students from Gentry’s Intermediate School enjoyed getting out of the classroom and into the mud during the second annual "Mud Dogger" event on the school playgrounds. The event was a PTO fundraiser to help teachers pay for needed school supplies.

— Students from Gentry's Intermediate School enjoyed getting out of the classroom and into the mud during the second annual "Mud Dogger" event on the school playgrounds Friday. The event was a PTO fundraiser to help teachers pay for needed school supplies.

The playground area was turned into a muddy obstacle course in which students crawled on their bellies or backs in the mud under barricades and yellow plastic lines. They made their way through mud-filled tires, climbed over a hay-bale barricade, walked on a rope bridge and then slid on their bellies or backsides on a "slip and slide" in plenty of muddy water. Following their fun in the mud, students rinsed off some of the mud in three plastic swimming pools which were soon filled with muddy water and then were hosed off and dried with towels before heading back inside and changing into dry clothes.

All in all, the kids loved it and were full of smiles and laughs as they made their way through the muddy course a number of times before getting cleaned up and back into the classroom. Muddy students offered teachers hugs along the course to share the mud. And, though it was a muddy experience, it was for a good cause.

"Our Mud Dogger event was a fundraiser that was started last year by our PTO," said Keeta Neal, principal at the intermediate school. "This is our second annual," she said, explaining that "money raised is used by our PTO to help teachers with classroom needs ... and the class with the most money donated in each grade will receive a pizza party."

Pizza was donated by TJ's Pizza. Other businesses which donated included Smith Drug, Wasson Funeral Home, Lowes in Siloam Springs and Sam's Club in Fayetteville.

The school's maintenance department was instrumental in helping set up the muddy course, and parents attended and helped out, too.

"The students all had fun," Neal said.

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General News on 05/03/2017