Upper St. Clair Kids Host Carnival For Great Cause

Southvue Drive was rockin' on Monday afternoon as a group of students hosted a summer carnival.

Kids played games, sang karoake, provided refreshments, handed out prizes and offered raffles all for a great cause.

Every game was created by kids and every prize and refreshment was donated by adults. This allowed every penny made from Monday's carnival—a total of $700 in four hours—to go to Timmy's Fund, a charity that helps families dealing with childhood cancer.  

Eleven-year-old Kayla Senneway and her mom are the masterminds behind the event—planned in just two weeks thanks to the help of a lot of other students and parents.

A mutual friend of the Senneways knew Joe and Tera Quigley, the parents of Timmy, who passed away in December 2004 after a valiant seven-month battle against an aggressive form of brain cancer. Timmy was two and a half years old.

If you have children—and even if you don't—it hard not to get emotional talking about the trials and tribulations a family like the Quigley's had to endure. You can imagine the emotions Jan Senneway was feeling when her daughter posed the following question:

"Can we have a lemonade stand to raise money for Timmy's Fund," Kayla said.

Kayla's mom, Jan, had a hard time sleeping that night. She thought, "How can we take this to the next level and raise some real money for these families?"

Then it hit her. Hold a carnival on the front lawn. And it didn't take much arm twisting to get Kayla excited about the idea.

Kayla is part of an IB program at Boyce Middle. As part of the program, they have to perform 30 hours of community service during the summer. Kayla and her friends each spent a good portion of their community service preparing this carnival.

Kayla must have a lot of friends in the IB program, because they put on one heck of a carnival geared towards children between the ages of three and 12. All the participants walked away with prizes and each game was just 25 cents (take that Kennywood!). 

"I still get a little choked up talking about it," Jan said.

The games created by the kids were well crafted. Many seemed to mirror the games provided at an amusement park. Some of the games included throwing ping pong balls into a pool of bowls, picking ducks with special numbers underneath and finding a special marked balloon in a trampoline. Kudos to the organizers for improvising when most of the balloons blew away with a gust of wind. It suddenly became "find the crumbled up paper with an x on it" game.

Kayla ran the raffle wheel, which was a big wheel made out of K'nex. Players won tickets depending on where the Wheel of Fortune-type contraption ended up. There were also prizes like a free icee you could land on.

There was popcorn, cookies, lemonade and anything else you would find at a carnival.

The carnival was a total team effort. Zoe Karidis, Cassie Henricks and Ahnna Jones were a few of her friends that helped organize. 

Kayla had a lot of fun helping put the event together, but she was also serious and devoted to the cause—as were all the kids. Their parents should be very proud of the effort put forth by the children. Timmy's parents will also be very proud, and I'm sure Timmy himself was looking down from heaven as well—enjoying every moment.