From meeting Santa and playing Christmas bingo to sipping hot cocoa and crafting a train decoration, several hundred Meridian elementary students celebrated the holiday season this week with a visit to Ross Collins Career and Technical Center’s Polar Express experience.

Now in its third year, the center’s annual Poplar Express event is hosted by its Educator Prep students and is a festive, holiday-themed experience for kindergarten and first-grade students from Meridian’s five elementary schools.

“A little over 750 students will come through Tuesday through Friday with one class coming through on Monday,” said Dena Patterson, Educator Prep instructor at Ross Collins and organizer of the event.

She said the students make stops at four stations during the tour with activities planned at each one.

“They make a train craft, like a little Polar Express train. The students read them the story, ‘The Polar Express,’ so we try to bring literature into the tour a little … so the ones who do not know the story will learn more about it,” Patterson said. “Then, they get a chance to play some games, and they have some cookies and cocoa and a photo op with Santa.”

Parkview Elementary teacher Wanda Clark brought 14 of her kindergarten students on the tour on Thursday.

“They are definitely having a good time,” she said. “It’s educational and it’s fun for them.”

For the week-long event, the downstairs of Ross Collins is transformed into a winter wonderland with stringed lights, fake snow and decorated hallways in tribute to the beloved children’s Christmas storybook.

While it is a fundraiser for the Educator Prep students, many of Ross Collins faculty and students get on board to help make the Polar Express successful, Patterson said.

Building trades students, along with a little help from the automotive body repair students, constructed a locomotive engine and other decorations for the Polar Express, she said. Industrial maintenance students helped hang all of the lights and ornaments throughout the hallway and rooms. Culinary arts students helped baked cookies for the event. Engineering and marketing students joined the Educator Prep students in getting the center ready by creating life-size scenes from the book.

On Thursday, several of the Educator Prep students, as well as some Ross Collins instructors, donned Christmas pajamas or costumes to help make the experience fun for the children.

“We have Buddy the Elf and the train conductor, really our whole center tries to get on board,” Patterson said.

Ross Collins student Char’Tayvious Edwards, who happens to serve as the state president of the club Educators Rising for Mississippi, said the work to get the center ready for the event is time consuming, but worth it when they see the children’s faces light up in excitement.

“It takes a lot of work, but this year, it really went fast,” he said. “We really just worked in the hallway for one week and got everything up in that same week.”

He said the children have fun with the Polar Express experience, especially the photos with Santa and the cocoa and cookies, but the event benefits Educator Prep students as well by giving them hands-on experience of working with young students, each with their own different personality.

Patterson agreed.

“I feel like it’s a unique opportunity for my students to get hands-on experience with time management, classroom management, transitions, how to socialize with the students, discipline,” she said. “It requires them to take a leadership role.”