Bedford Hills Second Graders Pour Their Hearts Into Annual Service Project

Before the break, Bedford Hills Elementary School’s sun-drenched cafeteria was full of busy second graders wearing colorful fleece hats while hard at work. It was the second grade’s annual Hats from the Heart event, during which second graders create no-sew hats and donate them to a group in need.

“We’re making hats for a Mississippi school because it snowed there,” Sasha explained. “We each made one for ourselves too.”

“They had a big, bad snowstorm and they didn’t have any hats!” Ava said.

Second-grade teacher Colleen Sullivan has a connection with Clare Buchanan, a third-grade teacher in Mississippi who teaches at Batesville Intermediate School. Buchanan noted how it had snowed and none of her students had hats. Sullivan thought they’d be the perfect group to benefit from the annual Valentine’s Day service project.

“Students from each school will write letters to each other and then we’ll have a Google Meet, where they can all see each other,” Sullivan said.

With help from family volunteers, Sullivan and Kathleen Herson’s classes spent time tying strips of fleece to make the hats and decorating tags for each one. Each time a hat was finished and plopped into the donation box, Sullivan rang a bell — which added to the celebratory feeling of the event.

“My favorite part is when you tie the strips,” Juan said, watching his fingers intently as he did just that.

Teddy was working on coloring in his tag when he said, “It makes me feel good to do this.”