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St. Vincent de Paul students make books and
hats for juvenile cancer patients
By Sara Weikel -
Cottonwood/Holladay Journal (June 4, 2008)
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| Students from St. Vincent de Paul delivered hat trees to both Shriners Hospital and
Primary Children’s Medical Center as part of the school’s Hat Tree Project. |
Students at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic
School redoubled their efforts for a second
year of their Hat Tree project, making
about 300 storybooks and hats for juvenile
cancer patients at Shriner’s Hospital and
Primary Children’s Medical Center.
The storybooks – all the original work
of the students – were written on the theme
of a magic hat. The accompanying hats were
made to match the hats in the books and
decorated with plastic jewels, buttons and
feathers. Each book and hat set was hung
together on brightly-painted wooden “hat
trees” specially made for the program.
The last load of books and hats bound
for Shriner’s Hospital was delivered May
20, making a total of nearly 200. The last
hundred books – actually color photocopies
of books sent to Shriner’s – and hats
will be delivered to Primary Children’s
over the summer.
“It’s kids serving kids, in a nutshell,”
said Gary Green, St. Vincent’s vice principal
and National Junior Honor Society advisor.
“They get to share something with a
child who’s suffering.”
The Hat Tree project started during the
2006-07 school year. Second grade teacher
Rhea Hristou wanted her students to do a
service project for Primary Children’s oncology
unit, but hospital regulations prevented
her from actually bringing her students
to visit the children there, she said.
Making unique books and hats allowed her
students to touch the young cancer patients’
lives even from a distance.
For the 2007-08 school year, St. Vincent’s
NJHS students joined the cause and
secured a $1,000 grant from Youth Ventures,
a division of Youth Services America
that funds youth-led community service
projects. The grant specifi ed that the students
would continue the existing project
in a new location – Shriner’s Hospital –
and paid primarily for the hats and building
materials for a second hat tree.
The new hat tree was cut and assembled
by St. Vincent’s parents, and painted
by NJHS students. The NJHS students also
made pop-up books and decorated hats to
put on the tree.
Several other grades soon swelled the
project’s numbers. The third and sixth
grades worked independently on books and
hats, and the second grade teamed up with
their seventh grade buddies to add their
own unique creations.
The books made by the second and
seventh graders were also turned into iPodfriendly
podcasts by Dane Falkner, co-owner
of a software development company and
father of a St. Vincent’s preschooler. Falkner
fi lmed the students reading the storybooks
out loud against a green screen in his podcasting
studio, then digitally replaced the
green screen with illustrations scanned directly
from the books. As the background of
the video, the illustrations change each time
the child in the video turns a page. The finished
podcasts can be found at http://feeds.
catholicclasses.org/catholic-kids.
Last year’s round of the Hat Tree Project
was so popular among the cancer patients at
Primary Children’s, the hospital requested
more hats and books for this year, said Carol
Barman, St. Vincent’s development director.
Since the request came after the project was
set up to target Shriners, the school solved
the problem by making color photocopies
of about half of the books made for kids at
Shriners, and adding extra hats to the pile.
The Hat Tree project helps keep up
the spirits of the children at the hospitals,
many of whom are there for months at a
time, said Barman. It lets them “know that
kids in our community are thinking about
them,” she said.
Juvenile cancer is a diffi cult thing for
kids who are not going through it to understand,
but the project helped the kids at St.
Vincent’s understand better, and gave them
something they could do about it, said
Hristou.
“I was proud of them,” she said. “They
did a great job.” |
