On Friday evening, March 9, 2018, as part of the 2018 Aiken County Founders Day celebration at the Aiken County Historical Museum, elementary and middle school students from Aiken County Public Schools presented "Aiken County Through the Decades" – a display exhibition visually capturing historical events from 1900 to 2000. Students dressed in historical attire and prepared short monologues describing the decades.
Daniel Parent, who serves as K-5 Social Studies Curriculum Interventionist for Aiken County Public Schools, helped to organize the student displays.
“The whole idea was for people to be able to walk down through nostalgia lane and the Twentieth Century to have an idea of what was going on in the world at that time and also what was going on here in Aiken County during those time periods,” Parent stated. “The students did an outstanding job. They made their displays as colorful and visual as possible, they came up with artifacts and short movies, and then we had middle school students who performed short monologues about what it was like to live in that decade.”
Ten elementary schools, four middle schools, along with high school drama students, joined to create a very special evening of history. Participating schools included Aiken Elementary, Clearwater Elementary, East Aiken School of the Arts, Gloverville Elementary, Millbrook Elementary, Mossy Creek Elementary, North Aiken Elementary, North Augusta Elementary, Oakwood Windsor Elementary, Redcliffe Elementary, A.L. Corbett Middle School, Aiken Middle School, Kennedy Middle School, Langley Bath Clearwater Middle School, New Ellenton Middle School and Schofield Middle School.
A special thanks to Dunkin Donuts of Aiken, Little Caesars of Aiken and Chick-Fil-A of Aiken for generously providing prizes for our top displays of the evening. Our three middle school display winners were Middle School New Ellenton STEAM Middle School (First Place), A.L. Corbett Middle School (Second Place), and Kennedy Middle School (Third Place); and our top three elementary school displays from Aiken Elementary (First Place), Redcliffe Elementary (Second Place) and Clearwater Elementary (Third Place).
Thank you to the Aiken County Historical Museum for hosting our students on a wonderful evening of fun and interactive learning.
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