Isn’t there always that one house on your street that has a really cool pumpkin? Well in this case, instead of a street, it was the middle school quad, and there wasn’t just one outstanding pumpkins, but more like 20. On Friday, October 28, the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, having spent a week or two planning and then decorating their pumpkins in their advisory groups, placed their orange masterpieces on tables in the quad to be judged. Students were allowed to use any resources available to them to decorate their pumpkins. The only rules were that each advisory could only use one pumpkin, the pumpkin could not be punctured or carved in any way, and any props used had to be touching the pumpkin.

While 28 advisories entered this competition, only three were eligible to win prizes – one from each grade level. There was a first, second and third place in each grade, with the first place winners

in each grade receiving blue or orange slips. Each year, the pumpkins are secretly judged by different faculty members, so none of the students know who the judge is. This is probably a good thing because the administration knows some students would either lobby the judges to vote for their pumpkin, or harass them if their pumpkin doesn’t win. Or both!

From the sixth grade, coming in third this year was Mrs. Quigley’s advisory, second was Mrs. Sukhu’s advisory, and first place – for the third year in a row – was Mr Crisafi’s advisory group. His students created a Kermit the Frog pumpkin using green spray paint, silver Christmas tree ornaments for the eyes, and green poster board for the collar.

For the seventh grade, in third place was Mrs. Oster’s advisory, second place was Ms. Rios’ advisory, and Dr. James’ advisory claimed first place. Their creation was Surfing Sue, a pumpkin painted to look like a pineapple, complete with a yellow body, sunglasses, a surfboard, sunblock, and a construction paper pineapple stem at the top. “We started out by assigning each advisee a job and materials to bring in,” said seventh grader Evan Lieberman, a member of James’ advisory. “One day during long advisory we put the whole pumpkin together as quickly as we could, and that was really it. In the end I was really surprised that we won.”

Even students who lost the competition had fun during the making of the pumpkins. “We didn’t know what to do with our pumpkin, so we just put paint on it,” said seventh grader James Hoffman. “Then we got the idea of the Snapchat ghost. In the end, it was still really fun to throw paint on a pumpkin.”

For the eighth grade, Mrs. Devine’s advisory took third, Ms. McAllister’s group placed second, and Ms. St. Martin’s advisory won. Her group painted a small pumpkin to resemble an eyeball, and placed it in a glass jar half full of blue liquid, making it look like some sort of weirdly preserved science experiment.

The creativity this year was absolutely first rate, and will hopefully carry over to the next advisory competition: the wreath decorating contest in December!