Sara Stadem | Editor
During the season of giving, the preschoolers at Imagination Station decided to show kindness and give back to those in need in the community of Hartford.
According to Preschool Teacher Chenae Billie, the preschoolers had a theme which was “I put the ‘I’ in Kindness” to teach children different ways to be kind to others. “We decided to host a Food Drive for the local food pantry at Central Valley Community Church,” Billie said. Billie had the assistance of the other preschool teacher, Kerrie, as well with the project.
“We do a lot of things in the community already. We visit Leisure Living at least once a month, when it storms, we will go and pick up sticks. We try to teach them the importance of your community,” Billie said. She continued, “Just ask them awesome city workers. They always see us out and about… usually up to something. So, when it came to sharing kindness, we had to think of something that was a little different from where we usually do.”
In order to better assist the food pantry, Billie contacted the church to see what was in need. “I called to see if they needed anything specific. At that moment they were in a need for everything,” Billie explained.
“At first, they (children) didn’t understand but as the week went on, we talked about it. The kids got joy about adding to the drop off box outside the classroom to our wagon inside the classroom and seeing how many items we accumulated each day,” Billie said. “They caught on to sometimes people are really hungry and don’t have the opportunity to get some food so we have to share because we had extra.”
Together, the preschool classroom collected 104 items for the food pantry. Billie explained on December 17 they walked the items to the food pantry for delivery and how much the children enjoyed the walk to the church to unload the wagon.
Billie said, “I enjoyed the process from beginning to end. It’s so nice to have families that really participate in random things that I send home, especially this one.” She concluded, “It was great to see how much we were able to donate. It was a great learning and growing experience. The kids still talk about it. We do so much inside our community so I just enjoy helping them establish a great ground for them to continue on.”