GILL – In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, kindergartners from Gill Elementary School collected 61 blankets that will be donated to local shelters.
Kindergarten teacher Kelly Gobiel said she teaches her students about King in a way that children will understand.
“Every year we teach the kindergarten students about Dr. King and how he tried to make the world a better place,” Gobiel said. “Students create their own hopes and dreams for the world. For example, ‘My dream is that all people have enough food to eat. My dream is that all pets have a home.’ This year when we talked about how people celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, we talked about a day of service and the kindergartners asked what we were going to do.”
She said because the school usually holds food drives, a blanket drive would be appropriate, especially during the past few weeks of lower temperatures.
As a way of incorporating project-based learning, students drafted a letter to the community to generate donations, decorated a box for collection, updated students and staff over the PA system about the status of the drive and sorted and counted the blankets.
Blankets were sorted into six categories — fleece, bed, baby, knitted blankets and animal shelter donations. The donations will be dropped off at the homeless shelter on Wells Street in Greenfield, and others will be going to the Franklin County Regional Animal Shelter.
Students in the first grade also contributed two new fleece blankets made by hand. The blankets served as a project for the class to learn to measure and tie knots.
“The students have truly embraced the meaning of service learning, and they are proud to be helping others in need. This class has an amazing sense of empathy for others,” Gobiel said. “These are big ideas for kindergartners, and they’ve really taken to it.”
To explain inequality and Dr. King’s peaceful protests, Gobiel used an example of only allowing children with blue eyes to go to recess. She asked the class if it was fair to allow children to go to recess based on their appearance, and the children quickly said “no.” Then she asked the class, “What makes you, you?”
“Your heart and mind,” the class responded in unison.
The students said they did the blanket drive, because they wanted to help others.
Adie Abercrombie said the blanket drive was to “treat people well, like Dr. King did, so that they’re equal.”
Similarly, Nova Kim said the blanket drive was to “help other people be toasty warm.”
Another student, Lillian May said, “The blanket drive was important to me, because we wanted other people to keep warm and celebrate Dr. King’s birthday so he could be proud of us if he was still here.”