Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE – The little mailbox situated on a desk near the decorated Christmas tree at the SAD 1 Preschool was nearly bursting at the seams recently as pre-kindergartners stuffed the box with letters to Santa Claus. While the children are learning how to spell and write, they needed some help penning the letters to jolly old Saint Nick, and that help came in the form of some nearby “elves.”
TWO GAVINS ARE BETTER THAN ONE – Gavin Kelley, right, a sixth-grader at Presque Isle Middle School, helps pre-kindergartner Gavin Bernard write a letter to Santa Claus. This is the sixth year that middle-schoolers have penned letters to Saint Nick for the children at the SAD 1 Preschool.
Sixth-graders in Peggy Kelley’s and Casey Johnson’s classes at Presque Isle Middle School walked across the street Dec. 9 and visited both the morning and afternoon pre-K sessions and helped the young scholars write their letters.
The middle schoolers – many of whom wore Santa hats or reindeer antlers – enjoyed the experience.
“It was pretty fun,” said Drew Henderson. “I liked asking my partner what he wanted for Christmas. He wanted a Buzz Lightyear jet pack and a green bike.
“I think the teachers should do this again next year because it’s so fun,” he said. “The kids are so small and we’re so big. I think it helped put everybody in the Christmas spirit.”
While the activity was first and foremost meant to be a character-building exercise, there was a definite learning component to the project.
“They don’t really know how to write and some of them didn’t really know what they wanted, so we helped them out,” said Bradley Kinney. “We first wrote a list of what the kids wanted for Christmas, and then we worked that list into a letter to Santa.
“I have a younger sister whose 8, but it was neat working with really little kids,” he said. “I don’t usually help four- or five-year-olds; usually I don’t work with that little of people, but it was really fun.”
CALEB PAGE, left, a sixth-grader at Presque Isle Middle School, helped his little brother, Karsen, write a letter to Santa recently. Caleb worked with Karsen, who attends the SAD 1 Preschool, because he is “very shy and probably wouldn’t talk to anyone else.”
Caleb Page’s pre-K partner was no stranger to him; he worked with his brother, Karsen.
“My brother wants everything under the planet, plus he’s very shy, so I figured he would only talk to me and maybe the partner I had, but he really only talked to me,” said Page. “Karsen wants a bike, an mp3 player, and a toy white pickup truck.
“Even though I see my brother at home all the time, it was still pretty fun … besides the end when my brother got all upset because I had to leave,” he said. “After we got done writing the letter, I only had time to read half a book to him, so I told him I’d finish it at home. This was a good project because it helps the older kids get used to the younger kids and the younger kids get used to us older kids.”
Pre-kindergarten teacher Amy Daniels said her students were very excited to have the sixth-graders come over and work with them.
“It’s just a fun way for them to get their letters written to Santa,” said Daniels. “Some parents don’t have time to write the letter, and it’s good for the children to interact with kids who are bigger than they are, too. I’ve got quite a few students who are only children, and I’ve got some who only have younger kids in their family, so it’s good for them to interact with the older students.”
Daniels said some of the pre-kindergartners are “really shy,” and she hoped the social activity would help “break them out of that.”
“This is also a chance for them to get a good list together,” she said. “The lists go home to Mom and Dad, so hopefully that helps the parents out, too. This activity helps keep the spirit of Santa alive. The children will receive a letter back from Santa and it’s a lot of fun.”
This isn’t the only time the pre-K students and middle-schoolers will interact during the school year.
“We have Reading Buddies that come once or twice a month,” said Daniels. “We have backpacks with puppets and a story that they share, and the kids really enjoy it.”
This was the sixth consecutive year the middle-schoolers helped the pre-K children write letters to Santa. The idea originated with PIMS teacher Elaine Hendrickson, who now teaches seventh grade. Still wanting to be involved, Hendrickson expanded the project to include Angel Casavant’s kindergarten class at Pine Street Elementary School. Casavant was a sixth-grade science teacher at PIMS last year.
“I wanted my students to have the experience of writing letters to Santa,” said Hendrickson, whose students visited Pine Street Dec. 13. “Some did it last year and were just as excited this year. Later in the year, we will also expand upon this by becoming Reading Buddies with Angel’s room. Angel and I had talked last year about doing Reading Buddies, so it’s a good introductory activity.
“In the letter that they had to write to Santa, they had to set it up in friendly-letter format, so we talked about that previously,” she said. “They had to have the date, the greeting, the letter had to have two paragraphs – one that had at least three items the children wanted from Santa, and the second paragraph included whether the little one had been good or bad and what they were leaving for Santa to eat – they had to have a closing, and they had the little ones sign it. It’s kind of a hands-on, real-life experience for the kids to use writing in a practical way.”
Casavant said she was very pleased with the project and could see great benefits for both the kindergarten and middle school students “as it provided both an opportunity to practice their communication skills.”
“I was impressed with how well the middle school students did with the interview process of asking questions, listening, writing and the sometimes not so easy task of reading the body language of the little ones and reacting to them,” she said. “My students loved the individual and uninterrupted attention the middle school students were able to provide as they talked, and were able to immediately see their response being written down into words.
“I also noticed how a few of my ‘readers’ paid attention to the format of the letter and all signed their own name at the bottom,” said Casavant. “It was a great first lesson in formal writing!”
Hendrickson said she hopes her students enjoyed working with the younger children.
“By writing letters to Santa, they are giving of their time to help younger students. It also involves them in an authentic writing activity – building upon their letter-writing skills. It also provides an authentic reading environment to help my students develop fluency and Angel’s students to hear the written word and understand how a story works.”
Seventh-grader Shanelee Hardgrove said she got a lot out of the experience.
“I really enjoyed it,” she said. “I love helping kids and they were really nice to everyone there. It was really fun to help spread Christmas cheer to the younger kids.”
Student Lucie Simpson agreed.
“I really enjoyed writing to Santa with the little kids. It was fun to see how much fun they were having,” she said. “It made me remember when I was younger and I believed in Santa. It was nice to remember those days.”
Having participated in the Letters to Santa project last year as a sixth-grader, Simpson said there were some similarities and differences this year.
“It was really similar because the kids were excited to write to Santa and tell him what they wanted,” she said, “and it was different because some of the kindergartens knew how to write their own names.”
Interestingly, many of Hendrickson’s students had Casavant as a science teacher last year, and they enjoyed seeing each other once again.
“Since I knew many of the middle school students, it was a treat to see many of the shy and less confident students be able to shine with success and spread some holiday magic to the little ones through writing,” said Casavant. “It was a special treat for me to be able to visit with many of my students that I had as sixth-graders last year. I missed seeing them this past fall to ask how their summer was, how seventh grade was going and see how much they have grown and changed.
“They asked me immediately if ‘I like it better,’ ‘if I miss them’ and ‘if I miss the middle school,” she said. “I responded that I love both, but miss them, and that change is fun and exciting.”
As an added treat, some of Hendrickson’s students baked snacks to share with the kindergartners.
All teachers involved in the Letters to Santa project are looking forward to continuing this activity in the coming years.
JAYDEN CORMIER, left, a kindergartner at Pine Street Elementary School, takes a break from writing a letter to Santa to pose with his Presque Isle Middle School friend, seventh-grader Andrew Lessard.
NEWFOUND FRIENDS – Enjoying the experience of working together writing letters to Santa are, from left: Sophia Gordon, a kindergartner at Pine Street Elementary School, and Presque Isle Middle School seventh-graders Lindsey Lagerstrom and Taylor Williams.
WYATT YOUNG, left, a pre-kindergartner at the SAD 1 Preschool, and Hannah Chalou, a sixth-grader at Presque Isle Middle School, were all smiles as they worked together recently to write a letter to Santa Claus.
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS … – Summer Novak, left, ponders what she wants for Christmas before telling her seventh-grade partner Mandy Graham. Novak is a kindergartner at Pine Street Elementary School.
