K Kids wrap up service

VERNON — The Lounsberry Hollow K Kids have wrapped up their community service school year with an Earth Day celebration and school clean up.
The K Kids have been involved with many admirable projects this year including food drives, celebrating our military and seniors and serving our school, our community, our country and our world.
Connecting to our school found the children involved in several events. They created a prominent “Positive Actions, Positive Words” display in a school hallway, all faculty and staff received a handmade thank you gift, Earth Day sun catchers were made for the school and an outside clean up took place despite less than ideal weather conditions.
Connecting to our community, January found the K Kids organizing their second food drive of the year, the “Souper Bowl” where approximately one hundred food items were collected for local food pantries. Another collection took place in February in cooperation with Connect for Community and the one hundredth day of school. Students and staff brought in deodorant and dishwashing detergent and again one hundred items were collected. These items were donated to local food pantries to supplement items that not are not always covered by assistance programs. The children also created Valentine cards which were delivered to Meals on Wheel recipients. Several of the recipients and the Meals on Wheels coordinator responded with heartfelt thank you notes which the children truly appreciated.
To connect to our country, the K Kids took part in several activities honoring our military. The K Kids collected $242.00 which was donated to The United States War Dogs Association which provides support to the United States Military K-9 Teams. The students also wrote letters to the military dogs and a group of marines.
The marines have a special connection to Lounsberry Hollow as the media specialist, Mrs. Smaldone is the mother of one of the marines in the unit. The children received letters and pictures from the marines.
Mrs. Smaldone stated, “Everyone enjoys receiving mail-especially from home. Recently, a group of hard-working Marines received a special package from the Lounsberry Hollow K-Kids showing their support for our military. 1st Lt Christopher Smaldone, former Lounsberry Hollow student and 2010 Vernon Township High School Graduate is no different. Following 1st Lt Smaldone's graduation from the United States Naval Academy in 2015 and graduation from Quantico in 2016, he was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, as an Air Support Control Officer. 1st Lt Smaldone is currently a platoon commander of 19 Marines and is taking over the responsibilities of executive officer for a company of 70 Marines. He will be departing with a detachment of 20 marines for training exercises as the officer in charge shortly."
Connecting to our world, the students learned about Red Hand Day, an international effort to stop child soldiers. They created a large banner asking for the use of child soldiers to be stopped.
This year’s K Kids included fourth and fifth grade students in Lounsberry Hollow. This is the first time the fourth graders haven taken part in the club, and have proven to be an integral part of the club’s success. Many of the students have expressed the desire to join K Kids again next year or join the Builders Club at Glen Meadow.