Old Rochester Regional High School students and teachers are throwing open the doors to their Mattapoisett campus on October 24 for the second annual Fall Family Fun Day and Craft Market, a community festival that doubles as a fundraiser to support education for the school's Early Childhood Education students, including field trips to other child-care facilities and similar destinations. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will feature more than 50 craft vendors, pony rides, pumpkin decorating, apple tasting, and face painting.
Liz Kennedy, a teacher in ORR's Early Childhood Education program, is among the organizers behind the festival, according to 1420 WBSM. Last year's inaugural event, held in November, drew about 120 people, and organizers moved this year's date to October specifically to land closer to Halloween, the outlet reports. Adult admission is free, while children pay $5 to take part in the activities, and the craft market itself is open to anyone browsing nautical items, jewelry, and baked goods from local vendors alongside several food trucks.
Festival Supports Early Childhood Students' Education
Festival Supports Early Childhood Students' Education Money raised from the festival supports students' education, including field trips to other child-care facilities and similar destinations, per the same report. A vendor signup flyer from the district lists the day's schedule, including a puppet show at 10:30 a.m. followed by pony rides from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to Old Rochester Regional School District.
A Program Built Around Hands-On Experience
More than 100 students are currently enrolled in ORR's Early Childhood Education program, many of whom aim to work in education or with children and have expressed interest in fields like nursing, pediatrics, social work, and therapy, the WBSM report notes. The festival gives those students direct exposure to working with young children, since Early Childhood Education students help plan and run the day's activities for visiting families.
That hands-on role is no accident. The program holds formal state designation as an approved Chapter 74 Career and Technical Education program under Massachusetts Vocational Technical Education Regulations, according to the Old Rochester Regional School District. Students enrolled in the track can earn Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care teacher certification along with dual-enrollment college credits in Child Growth and Development through Bristol Community College, the district says. The program is young but has already produced graduates: Old Rochester celebrated its first official Chapter 74 Early Childhood Education graduating class in June 2024, recognizing eight seniors, Sippican Week reported at the time.
A Year-Round Learning Lab on Campus
The festival is just one piece of a broader early-childhood infrastructure built into the Mattapoisett campus. The district also hosts the Tri-Town Preschool Program directly on-site, serving children ages 2.9 to 5 in classes capped at 15 students, giving high schoolers a year-round learning lab before they help run public events like the fall festival, per the district's own program materials. The Early Childhood Education program and Early Childhood Office also organize an annual spring Touch-a-Truck and Early Childhood Community Day, which was held in May, according to John Guilfoil Public Relations.
Old Rochester Regional High School serves students from Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester, the coastal and rural Plymouth County towns that make up the Tri-Town region, per Wikipedia. That regional draw mirrors a much larger trend: statewide, more than 55,000 Massachusetts high schoolers were enrolled in Chapter 74 vocational and technical programs across more than 40 career fields as of 2024, according to the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators.
Fresh State Funding Backs Early Childhood Work
Fresh State Funding Backs Early Childhood Work The festival's fundraising push also comes as the district has recently landed significant outside support for early-childhood programming. Earlier this month, the Old Rochester Regional School District secured $277,468 across five education grants, including $75,468 through the Coordinated Family and Community Engagement Grant from the state Department of Early Education and Care, John Guilfoil Public Relations reported. The grant funding underscores how the district is piecing together public dollars to keep its early-childhood pipeline running from preschool classroom to college credit.
