Each year, in conjunction with Election Day, the Pre-K and kindergarten students at the Parkville Early Childhood Center hold their own election. The youngsters vote on that year’s name for their school mascot. Up until this year, the mascot was an eight-foot tall, 10-foot long, two-dimensional wooden dinosaur. This year, Parkville welcomed two, new, three-dimensional mascots—boy and girl penguins.
The penguins were created over several months by Gary von Hof, grandfather to four-year-old Parkville student Collin von Hof, and father-in-law of Parkville’s PTO President Cathy von Hof.
Parkville Principal Debra Shalom explained the election process, “In their classes, students decided on two names for the two new mascots. During a ‘Primary Election,’ four names are selected from the total submitted by all the classes. The four candidate names for the mascots were: “Slider” and “Snowball” for the boy penguin, and “Popsicle” and “Snowflake” for the girl penguin. The winners, and this year’s names for the new school mascots, are “Slider” and “Popsicle.”
