On Nov. 23, The Market at Delta hosted one of their monthly carnivals, Harvest Adventure Day, at the Budd 4 parking lot. For the carnival, staff set up crafts and games booths at the entrance of the market for families to try out.
The carnival is part of The Market’s recently launched initiative, Delta College Kids’ Discovery Days. Ever since last year, The Market had hosted carnivals each month for the entertainment of families. The months-old Discovery Days initiative builds on top of that by offering monthly showcases designed to promote both community and education.
“All it takes is one time to capture a child’s imagination, and that’s it. That can turn into something really, really great … Kids don’t normally think about college at that level yet. They’re thinking ‘oh, let’s get out of grade school,’ but they don’t think ‘okay, what do I do after that?’ So I feel like this is going to make kids go ‘wow, this is attainable,’” said Eric Carey, the director of The Market. “So it doesn’t matter who you are, if you come to this day, you’ve got a shot to do something really great. To go to college, and then go on from there, so this should make a really good connection with especially the kids in our community.”
The crafts booth at the carnival had a table for families to decorate plastic cutouts of trees to make a fall-themed, 3-D craft. Guests could decorate their trees with stickers of leaves, acorns, pumpkins and mushrooms. The booth also provided googly eyes and crayons for guests to further decorate their trees with. The Market offered the tree crafts in order to promote art and social responsibility, according to Carey.
“I think it was great. It was enjoyable. I like it because I do arts and crafts … I do it all the time with my grandkids,” said Molly Sarinana, grandmother and guest at The Market. “It was different because it was in a different environment.”
The games booth at the carnival included two tables, one with a mini basketball set and one with a mini Skee-Ball set. Guests could play either game for free, and receive one ticket for playing. These tickets could be exchanged for small toys, accessories and other prizes. Prizes were sorted by worth: balloons and whistles were worth one ticket, stress toys were worth two tickets while stickers and plastic toys were worth three tickets.
Throughout the event, Christmas-themed music was played on a speaker. Tables also offered free candy to guests, as well as a free coloring book that was custom-made by The Market and introduced this season. A child-sized photo stand-in to the side of the booths put children’s faces in the image of Delta graduates.
“I also like this and also the environment,” said Calista Lee, a child guest at The Market. “I really liked everything there.”
Less people attended The Market on Nov. 23 than in a typical operation, which Carey attributed to forecasts of stormy weather. At 12:12 p.m., a light sprinkle came over the carnival, which progressed into a shower by 12:17 p.m. Rain broke out by 12:28 p.m., causing the carnival to close 32 minutes before its scheduled end at 1 p.m.
The last monthly carnival to take place this year will Ornaments & Smiles: A Delta Kids Craft Day, a games and crafts booth offering decoratable ornaments that’s scheduled Dec. 21. For 2025, The Market also plans to partner with various departments and clubs at Delta to host showcases for the community.
“Our trajectory is to become more and more community-focused … With that thought process, it’s becoming more and more community-involved. In 2025, you’re gonna see departments from Delta, you’re gonna see clubs from Delta coming out, getting showcases,” said Carey. “So you may have crafts, you may have games but you’re also gonna see a showcase that gets the minds of – especially the kids, the next generation – involved so that they’ll start thinking … OK, Delta’s a viable opportunity for me that I wanna come take a part of.’ Just think of the kid that grows up and remembers, ‘man, I saw this really cool thing on Saturday at Delta. Hey, I wanna go to that place.’”
Correction: Molly Sarinana and Calista Lee’s names were spelled incorrectly in the print version of this story published on page 7 on Dec. 6.
