By Pennie Wredberg – Fort Morgan, Colorado …“It is like creating your dream birthday celebration,” said Lighthouse Seventh-day Adventist  Christian School student Paloma. “My favorite part was choosing what to put in our box.”

Recently, students at Lighthouse created birthday boxes for children in the community who might not otherwise get to have a celebration.

The idea started in February when students were talking about homelessness and other difficult situations that kids face today. “What would it be like to not get a birthday party,” the students wondered. “That would be very sad,” they concluded. So, they decided to plan a party in a box.

The project was explained during church and a note went home to parents describing what the students wanted to do. Donations for the boxes came pouring in from parents, church members, and even the students themselves.

Student partners decided what the theme of their box would be and together decorated the outside of a cake box. Soon the chapel was filled with boxes covered with pictures of horses, flowers, magnifying glasses, footprints, and waterfalls. Working with their co-designers, they walked up and down the tables set out in the chapel on Friday, deciding what type of frosting they wanted to match the cake they had chosen for their box. Then they added the candles, balloons, toys, and everything else needed to throw a small party.

“I hope that this makes someone happy,” a student was heard saying. “It would be so sad to not have a party for my birthday.”

“Can we do this again?” another student asked. “This is one of my favorite community service projects ever!”

All together there were eleven boxes, decorated and filled, donated to Fort Morgan County Family Center.

Mary Gross, Executive Director of Fort Morgan County Family Center, accepted all of the boxes and said that her staff would make sure the boxes would go to the families that needed them most.

Before the boxes left the church the students prayed that they would go to kids who needed to know that someone cared about them.

–Pennie Wredberg is the head teacher at Lighthouse Seventh-day Adventist Christian School; photos supplied

Addy and her buddy, Damian, even went shopping together for their ocean themed box, and
they had a very specific list of items they wanted to include, right down to a blue frosting to
make the cake look like the sea.

 

Mary Gross, Executive Director of Morgan County Family Center, and Pennie Wredberg,
Principal of Lighthouse, holding two “birthday boxes”.

 

Students worked with partners to choose, decorate, and fill their “birthday boxes.”

 

Brayden and Isaac’s birthday box was spy themed and included magnifying glasses, notepads
for recording clues, and squirt guns.
Riley and Emmery created an outdoor themed birthday box full of games that could be played
outside during a party.

 

Camila and Paloma’s floral themed box included seeds for planting flowers and a tiara so a
lucky someone would feel like a princess.