Every elementary student has a favorite time of their year, it's always on their mind and brings them joy beyond belief. What is this time of the year? Their birthday!! As a way to encourage kids to start helping kids, the Kindergarten through 5th grade students at Crestwood Elementary School in Rockford, Michigan collaborated in a drive to support a project carried out on October 4th, 2013 building birthday kits for families at Mel Trotter Ministries. Throughout the month of September, Kindergarten teacher Elice Davey, coordinated a school wide drive to collect the supplies needed to make the birthday kits, this included; shoe boxes, wrapping paper, cake mix, frosting, candles, and stickers. In order to bring in the learning component to this service project, the students were engaged in lessons throughout the month of September teaching them about the issue of homelessness and why it is important to give back to their community.
The project began with the students picking a station to work at in the classroom. These stations included a table taking shoe boxes and putting cake mix and frosting in them, the boxes then got handed to the next table where they had candles and stickers placed in them, and lastly a station to wrap the boxes like presents. This was done in a circle until all the supplies were packed and wrapped to be delivered to Mel Trotter Ministries. By the end of the project, over 60 birthday kits were made and will help sixty children in the Grand Rapids community celebrate their favorite time of their year, their birthday!
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