Grandest Friends’ Day (GFD) is a day that both grandparents and students alike mark on their calendars. It is one of the most important days of the year for Benjamin to showcase the School to students’ grandparents, relatives, and/or special friends. “It was one of my top two or three days of the year,” said Head of Middle School Mr. Charles Hagy about this year’s Grandest Friend’s Day.“Number one, for students it is a great opportunity to celebrate the School they love with the most important people they will ever have in their lives,” he said. “It’s really important for grandest friends to have this opportunity to walk around with their grandchildren to see what we do here.”

At TBS, Grandest Friends’ Day is usually held during four days in March for students in the WOW program (pre-k 3) through the Middle School. To accommodate the grandest friends, the School staggers the celebration, inviting grandparents to campus on different days for the different grade levels. The Middle School held its GFD on Wednesday, March 7, and the campus’s guests enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with their grandchildren.

“Well, I always love to see Olivia,” said Mr. Ken Simon, grandfather to eighth-grader Liv Simon. “I don’t get her to see as often as I like. It’s nice to see what she is learning in school, to listen to the teachers, and to realize how much more she is learning that I know.”

The students look forward to GFD as well.“ My favorite thing is that every year is different,” said eighth-grader Sydney Steinger. “[My grandparents] gets to see all the work I have been doing, and they get to meet my teachers,” she said.

The Grandest Friends this year arrived on campus around 8:30 a.m. They were then taken to the quad where they perused the eighth-grade monument projects. The monuments, built out of papier-mâché with the help of artists from the Center for Creative Education (CCE), were Holocaust memorial pieces. Each group, consisting of three to four students,were assigned an actual Holocaust victim and were charged with making a memorial to commemorate that individual’s life.

The grandest friends then rotated through classroom presentations from subject-area teachers in each grade level where they learned what the students were learning.

After the hour-long rotation, The Benjamin Parents’ Association served coffee and a light breakfast in the beautifully decorated gym. There were also several varieties of games and card games on the tables – from Connect Four to checkers to Uno – so that students and their grandest friends could socialize while playing together.

Around 11:00 a.m., students said goodbye to their grandest friends and headed to class, but the brief time they spent together made it a memorable morning.

“My favorite thing [about Grandest Friend’s Day] is seeing my grandest friends because I don’t get to see them that often,” said seventh-grader Kiran Spencer.