If you happen to have a birthday on February 29th, you are enjoying it more than the rest of us!
A second grader and one of her teachers were celebrating their birthdays Wednesday, Leap Day, at a Garnet Valley School.
When your birthday comes every four years, you don't hold back when it finally arrives, and the students at Bethel Springs Elementary held a birthday celebration and learned a lot about Leap Year in the process.
These second graders have been waiting all year for Nashetah Thomas-El's birthday, and so was Mrs. "T" who brought her a gift of earrings.
"She gave me little frogs that symbolize Leap Year," said Nashetah Thomas-El.
There were cupcakes and plenty of hugs.
Nashetah's leap year age is two, but in regular years, she turned eight on Wednesday.
Mrs. T's age is 14 in leap years, but she wasn't eager to calculate her other age.
But with all the talk about leap year birthdays, second grade teacher Andrea Shearn wanted to be sure her class knew a little about leap year.
"A Leap Year has 366 days, a normal year has 365 days," said Nashetah.
"How often do we have a Leap Year?" asked Ms. Shearn.
"Nearly every four years on the Gregorian Calendar," the students answered.
The students also learned that the reason for Leap Year is to keep the calendar in alignment with the seasons, and if we didn't have Leap Year, we would lose six hours every year on the calendar.
"In 100 years, we would lose 24 days on our calendar," explained another 2nd grader.
And as the question was raised if there ever was a February 30th? The students learned that there was, back in 1712 in Sweden.
"There was also a February 30th in the Soviet Union in 1930, when that country introduced a revolutionary calendar," explained another student.
But the students were not off the hook that easy. They also learned about a Leap Second.
So what is a Leap Second?
"It is a second measured by an atomic clock," the students explained. "It is a second that is added or subtracted from C.U.T.; that is Coordinated Universal time."
