Sewickley Montessori students share spirit of holiday season

The third-grade students of Montessori Children's Community got themselves into the holiday spirit this month with their annual toy collection benefiting the Beaver County Toys for Tots, an organization that helped serve about 3,900 children last year.

The collection effort, which has become a tradition in Lisa Edson's third grade class, eagerly is awaited by the lower elementary section of the school, she said.

“These students have seen the third year students in the last few years run this drive, so they look forward to seeing it again and again and again,” Edson said. “Then they have the opportunity to actually run this effort.”

The drive would not have been possible if not for the efforts of the entire class, though two students stood out. Megan Foust, 8 and Keira Myers, 9, took it upon themselves to make sure the drive was enough of a success to collect over 100 toys, believed to be the highest total yet for the annual collection.

“I was excited for it because I had been waiting for a really long time, and it's really fun and it's good because you're helping people and having fun donating toys to people at the same time,” Keira said.

The students led in making posters that shared the details on the collection as well as giving a speech to the others students in the school to encourage them to bring in toys.

“We are very much a community-based school, where there is a lot of emphasis on treating each other with respect and treating ourselves with respect and also treating the community with respect, so this is very much a part of our mission statement in trying to help people all around us,” Edison said.

Some of the toys included crafts made by the students, dolls and games. Edson said they tried to include different toys that appealed to different age groups.

The student's efforts come in a year where numbers are down, according to Beaver County Toys for Tots local coordinator Linda McKenzie.

“I'm guessing [we will collect] around 3,000 [toys],” she said. “It varies, but applicants are low this year and so are the toy donations.”

The Cochran Hose Company in Sewickley helped collect the toys from Montessori Children's Community and stopped at the school with a fire truck so kids could load the toys themselves.

“The fire company has also been a really big help, and that's a great connection to have as well,” Edson said.

The experience not only will help the community, but will instill a sense of giving back, Edson said.

“We basically enjoyed it because we thought it was fun to get to actually make the crafts [and] make the boxes we put the toys in,”third-year student Megan Foust said.

“We thought it would be fun to look at the fire truck as we loaded the toys in. It was just a really fun opportunity and we felt kind of good that we were helping kids that didn't get to have toys for Christmas.”

Vince Russo is a contributing writer for Trib Total Media.