Schools show spirit of giving
The giving spirit of the holidays has taken over the hallways in local schools.
Keene High School students pulled out all the creative stops to make cards to send to military servicemen and women, a project sponsored by the school’s Renaissance club.
Students in early childhood education classes at Keene High made hats, stockings and gift bags for children in the city’s homeless shelters, and the Keene High National Honor Society students decorated, served food and cleaned up at the RISE … for baby and family’s annual holiday party at Keene’s United Church of Christ. The students also made gingerbread men for Santa to distribute.
The Cheshire Career Center’s DECA chapter at Keene High School collected toys for the Toys for Tots program.
Students in Eric Stinebring’s 6th-grade homeroom at Keene Middle School also collected toys for the Toys for Tots program, gathering 35 items total. Donna Fairbanks’ 7th-grade homeroom conducted a bake sale and used the proceeds to buy even more toys for the program. Students in Caitlin Sullivan’s 6th-grade homeroom collected almost 100 warm coats and donated them to the Salvation Army. And Erika Greenwald’s 8th-grade homeroom’s bake sale netted funds to donate to Project Share, a local charity that buys holiday gifts for needy children.
Even the city’s youngest students are in the giving mood. The preschool and kindergarten children at Keene Montessori School collected $133.28 to send to Pennies for Peace.
The money will be used to help educate children in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The students started the collection in September with Singing for Peace, joining children all over the world in one continuous song for peace.
Over the river in Vermont, Compass School students spent part of their annual Giving Day at Our Place Drop-in Center in Bellows Falls, where they decorated holiday cookies and created a tower of canned goods they had collected.
Before Giving Day, each student and staff member had drawn the name of another member of the Compass School community. On the day, everyone presented a homemade gift, personalized to that individual. Each gift presenter spoke about the gift and why it was appropriate to the person receiving the gift.
Wreath-making, doll-making, and potato latke-cooking were some of the activities that occupied Well School students and their grandparents at the school’s multi-cultural holiday craft day.
Grandparents came from all six New England states to join their grandchildren in making multi-cultural crafts for the winter holidays. Diwali, Hanukkah and Christmas traditions were honored by most of the Peterborough school’s 130 students and their grandparents.
The school’s elementary students rotated through a variety of craft projects while the middle school students worked on longer, more involved projects such as lantern-making and whittling.
The afternoon concluded with singers from the middle school chorus entertaining the participants by singing in Hebrew, Spanish and Latin.
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