Christmas Store: Generous donations provide gift ideas for students’ families

With the meaning of Christmas constantly changing, preschool educator Lori Olson helped the Lind Grade School revisit the importance behind the season of giving. Last week, students at the grade school had the opportunity to shop for family members in the Little Learners Christmas Store: a classroom stocked full of Christmas gifts.

Olson created the children’s store with help from generous donations from residents in Lind and Ritzville. The store allowed students a chance to select Christmas gifts for family members, which may not have been an option without the help of the store.

“The thing that touched me is how nice the things were. They (residents) were generously donating new things, beautiful things,” Olson said. “We are so fortunate to have such generous people in both communities.”

The idea came to Olson during the Thanksgiving break, after she had spent weeks listening to students say, “I want this” for Christmas. She hoped to find a way for students to realize the importance of giving and the joy it can bring to them.

Olson decided to create a store for her students, and she posted a request for gift items on her Facebook page.

The response was immediate and phenomenal.

The items ranged from clothing, to toys, to household items suitable for gifts. Olson made at least five trips from Ritzville alone with her car piled full of donations, and she soon realized the project would be even more successful than she dreamed.

The project was originally geared towards the preschool classes, totaling 25 students, but with the overwhelming amount of donations, Olson decided to make it a school-wide store. Olson estimated that 500 items would be needed, and after receiving 636 items, she stopped counting.

The donations were separated into categories and boxed up until the store could be opened last week. There were so many items donated that the entire shower in the boys’ locker room was used as storage for the donations.

Olson, with help from faculty members, displayed the gifts based on gender and age, with potential gifts for mothers in one section of the room and gifts for fathers on the other. Olson said there were plenty of items for siblings and mothers, but a limited selection for teenagers to adult males.

But the selection still provided more than enough gift ideas for the 107 students in Lind Grade School. Each student received a coupon for each member of the family and was allowed to select one gift for each family member.

“The preschool kids were the first … and they went right to what mom would like and dad would like. I was genuinely touched with how much thought they put into it,” Olson said.

The tables were filled with toys and Olson thought the students would immediately navigate towards those items, but each student understood they were shopping for their family and only considered toys for their siblings, not themselves.

“At the beginning, I read the ‘Giving Tree’ to help them understand the whole thought process,” Olson explained. “I told the kids, this is for Christmas, not for when you get home. It’s so your parents have something to open on Christmas day.”

The preschool students began the shopping adventure, and Olson said even the youngest students took the time to think about practical gift items for family members.

The preschool students also decorated and created their own wrapping paper and spent the afternoon carefully packaging the gifts, with assistance from volunteers and teachers. Olson said creating the wrapping paper helped the students connect to the idea of giving, and made the giving aspect of Christmas more important to them.

The older grades had an opportunity to shop after the youngsters, and Olson said they were just as excited as the younger students. The older students helped bring a balance to the items shopped for, as they gravitated towards books and clothing for their families.

“The faces coming down the hallway that afternoon, they were just lit up,” Olson said.

Based on the success of this year’s Little Learners Christmas Store, Olson hopes to continue it into the future to continue to teach the kids how important it is to give, not just receive.

“I already have some volunteers for next year that would love to help out with it,” Olson said. “I’m hoping it can be an annual event for the kids to look forward to.”