FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Youngsters Have a Ball With Snow

Moments earlier, a din of shrieks had filled the 54-degree air, but now the preschoolers and first-graders were a little awed and stood quietly in a semicircle around the dingy mound of packed ice that was shrinking before their eyes. Relief was on the way.

Slowly backing up to the group on the playground of Mamie L. Northcutt Elementary School was a pickup truck loaded with another delivery of snow. The handles of two shovels protruded from the bed.

Out of the cab stepped Bryan Sherlock and Craig Miller, both 19. As they shoveled their cargo of white powder to replenish the mound, the 40 or so children, wearing gloves and jackets, were snow-struck.

“Wow! More snow!” the youngsters yelled as they jockeyed for position to jump onto the growing pile, only to be restrained by teachers and their assistants.

It wasn’t exactly a winter wonderland but rather a ton of ice donated by the Costa Mesa-based Ice Capades Chalet. It was shoveled onto the campus by parents and volunteers, giving many of Northcutt’s students their first experience with snow and ice.

“It’s wild every year,” said Ana Morales, a kindergarten aide who supervised the event. “It’s fun for the kids.”

Equipped with tin cups, long plastic serving spoons, funnels, buckets, socks--just about anything they could get their hands on--the children dug in, jumped on, patted, molded, kicked and threw snow from the pile.

“My hands got cold,” one student reported to a teacher.

Cold or not, it didn’t stop the fun. Some children ran to the top of the mound to show off. Snowballs flew. Other students broke off from the group to do their own thing.

“We’re making a snowman,” said Marysol Hernandez, 8, as she patted down a small mound away from the larger group. One of her partners, first-grader Jori Coute, 6, piled snow on the almond-eyed man with a carrot smile.

About 120 kindergartners and first-graders got a chance to play in the snow Monday. Second- and third-graders will get a chance to play today.

The snow-filled mornings were organized by second-grade teacher Jackie Parker. She said that the ice was donated but that the school had to provide the truck and the labor.

Besides being fun for the children, teachers said, the snow provides a learning experience because so many of the students have never encountered it.

Diane Nelson, a kindergarten teacher who wore snowman earrings for the occasion, said the event is particularly good for non-English speakers. It helps them “grasp English skills by being able to see and touch (the snow),” Nelson said. “We get so much language from it. They talk about what it felt like and what they like about it.”

Once the youngsters started sculpting and playing, it was difficult for kindergarten teacher Celia Lackiusa to lure them away from the snow pile with hot chocolate topped with marshmallows and whipped cream.

“I’m already hot,” Mike Fawson, 5, told Lackiusa as he spread his jacket and ran back to the snow.