The Saint Mary’s School first and second grade classes celebrated Native American and Pilgrim Day today.

The first grade has been holding Native American Day every November since 2003, and second grade joined in with Pilgrim Day a few years later.

Students participate in American Indian and Pilgrim games and activities, including making shaman masks, and eat traditional foods such as cornbread with butter that they make themselves in the classroom.

Brad Shellhorse, a Native American interpreter from Cedartown, visits each year to play the drums, display artifacts to students and teach the students American Indian dances.

On Thursday, Janie Newton, grandmother of first-grade student Will Holloway, spoke to the students about her Native American ancestors and artifacts that she often finds around her early 19th-century Cherokee home in Rome.