Younger siblings come to play with food

By Aleta Cox

If you were here on campus this past weekend, you might have noticed an influx of small children present.

Don’t freak out — those children were here for Lil’ Sibs Weekend 2010, a weekend which has become an annual tradition at Earlham for the past 10 years.

The Student Activities Board (SAB) asks current students to invite their little siblings to campus for a weekend of visiting and fun activities.

This year’s event theme was food. Having had previous experience on SAB her freshman and sophomore years, senior Samantha Bossman, art major, planned this year’s theme and events.

Each year the theme is different, and is most often tailored around a selected movie that is shown — this year the event featured the film “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” — or around events that are already scheduled to be on campus. Adding to the foodcentered theme, Michael Pollan presented his speech “Connecting the Dots: Nutritionism, Health and Agricultural Policy” on Saturday night.

Sophomore Andrea Thompson helps her little brother, Jerramie Johnson, make a pasta necklace at the Fun With Food Little Sibs Weekend event on Friday in Comstock.

This year around 16 Earlham students registered to have their siblings join them for the planned activities. Friday’s main event was titled “Fun with Food,” where participants could join in a potato sack race, a game of cornhole or an egg toss. You could also create items out of food, such as making a pasta necklace, a bean mosaic or even a handmade rose from Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups candy.

Saturday’s events included cartoons and breakfast where students and “lil’ sibs” could eat a delicious breakfast while watching their favorite cartoons.

Crafts Time was later that afternoon, where participants could choose to create a t-shirt with their visitor.

Other activities included a horse trail ride and obstacle course provided by the Horse Barn and its staff, as well as swimming and rock climbing in the Wellness Center.

“Unfortunately this year we only had one student and ‘lil’ sib’ come out to the horse barn. We had set up a really neat obstacle course that a barn member would lead the child sitting on the horse through. I think the cold weather really worked against us, though, in that people just didn’t want to bring the young kids out,” said sophomore Cara Lippert, who works at the barn.

Not all the activities were limited to only students who had visitors, however. Two showings of “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” which focuses on a town where food falls from the sky like rain, were shown in the Landrum Bolling Center, which was open to anyone at Earlham who wished to watch. The movie is inspired from a popular children’s book published originally in 1978, then reprinted in 1982 and more recently in 2009.

While not scheduled into the Lil’ Sibs Weekend program, many students also chose to take their visitors to the Joseph Moore Museum, which included seeing a real Egyptian mummy, a 15,000-year-old mastodon and even interacting with live animals such as snakes.

“The Fun with Food activities were great; my niece really enjoyed making crafts out of food. We also went to the museum and she loved looking at all the different collections, although she was a little nervous about the snakes,” said senior Tia Jointer, interdepartmental major, who had her 4-year-old niece visiting her.

Junior Alicia Kees had her niece, Kylee, visit her for the weekend. The two got creative and started a game that combines dodge ball and tag.

“Ball tag is so much fun, we play it every time I come here. This time we got a lot of other people to play with us too. It was so fun,” said Kylee Kees.

Looking ahead to next year, Bossman mentioned that because many students on campus have cousins, nieces and other relatives, the event will not solely be limited to siblings. An idea for next year would be to incorporate other extended family members to participate in the weekend’s activities.

“I also think it would be great to see faculty members get involved and bring their kids along,” Bossman said.

Bossman also commended the event and reflected on the importance of inviting younger siblings to campus.

“The greatest thing about this event is not that it is huge and widely publicized, but that it is an intimate and small gathering where students can take a weekend to just enjoy spending time with their family,” she said. “That to me makes it all worth it, even if we only have a small amount of participation.”