Chemo Care Kits

I am one of the Activity Days leaders of the 8- and 9- year old girls in our church.  This summer I came across a website that showed kids putting together care kits for kids in the hospital going through chemo.  The site listed several suggestions for items that would benefit these kids, either to cope with medicine, boredom, or side effects from treatment.  I also came across a site that showed how to make easy-sew pillowcases.  I thought these two activities would be perfect for our girls complete (the pillowcases would serve as a "comfort" item in the kit.

I enlisted the help of my mom and together we spent a couple of hours choosing fabrics at JoAnn's.  We chose both boy and girl fabrics, as well as fabric geared towards all ages of children.  I was super excited to introduce this project to the girls and show them all the cute fabrics we chose.

I again enlisted the help of my mom for the sewing portion.  I am in NO WAY a seamstress and can barely even thread my sewing machine bobbins.  Thankfully, my mom was more than willing to help and we managed to teach the girls the very, very basics of sewing straight lines.  That night the girls cut and sewed 4 of the 14 pillowcases. 


Alli H

At another activity I had the girls each bring 2-3 small items based on the kit suggestions.  We sewed some more and started assembling all the donations into bags.  It took another month or so, but we finally managed to complete all 14 pillowcases to add to our "Chemo Care Kits."  In fact, we had so many items left over I made these into 11 "Hospital Care Kits" to be given to any child in the hospital.  Together we had 25 kits!  I was super excited. 

 

 

 

 



Set 2 of completed pillowcases.

Just last week, we finally made our "drop" at Phoenix Children's Hospital.  The Child Life Specialist that I spoke with was so impressed with what our girls did and was so excited to receive our donations.  Angie, my co-leader, and I took about 7 of our girls with us for the drop, which I hope made it even more real for them.  Despite A LOT of hard work (mostly with the sewing), I am so excited we did such a fun and memorable project and am excited about how cute it all turned out.



The final four that I completed myself.

The final four ready to go!



At Phoenix Children's Hospital making "the drop."

Christmas Concert

This past Tuesday Alora participated in Westar's annual Christmas Concert for grades K-4th.  This years program was something to do with penguins, but I never really understood the whole storyline and it was kind of hard to hear the words the kids were singing since the soundtrack was way too loud. Regardless, Alora held it together (no fits, hallelujah!) and did great! 

 

The entire 3rd grade class

Alora was front row (she's the smallest once again)

(she never did look too excited to be up there.)

Alora, front row, red dress

Grinchmas

Tonight we had our church Christmas party, a "Grinchmas" celebration. The entire gymnasium and front foyer were transformed in Whoville and the Grinch, himself, even stopped by to visit and take pictures with the kids.  The decorations were fantastic and the Grinch's make-up was very believable.