Stockings Made with Love

Christmas can’t come soon enough for lower school students at SBS. Not because of the gifts they will receive, but because of the Christmas cheer they will be sending to young patients at MD Anderson and Texas Children’s Hospital. 

Kindergarten through fourth grade students and teachers made over 364 stockings for Carley’s Closet, a division of Rutledge Cancer Foundation. It’s a service project no child should have to relate to, but certainly one that allows students an opportunity to make the holidays a little brighter for children in the hospital - an effort that is close to the heart of Lower School Student Life Coordinator Lorraine Koerner, a cancer survivor, “This project helped the students  understand the need to help others. Doing something for someone else who is ill and needs an extra pick-me-up is a dose of encouragement to help in their journey to healing.”
 
Each class came to Bible class to design their own stocking by choosing a fabric, cuff, trim and back. A team of parent volunteers and middle school students helped cut all the fabric and pieces to attach to the stockings and made an assembly line with all of the materials. After the students picked their fabric, parents helped sew the stockings together, the lower schoolers then wrote notes to include in the stockings which will be sent to Carley’s Closet. There they will be filled with donated items and delivered to patients during the Christmas holiday.

SBS Head of Lower School Rita Herring knows, firsthand, how a small gesture has the potential to mean so much, “I have a son who was diagnosed with bone cancer at 11 years old, and we spent a year in treatment at MD Anderson. It’s the little things that bring joy.”

Making Christmas stockings for hundreds of young patients with cancer may simply seem like just a service project. But to SBS students, teachers and parents, it is a labor of love. One SBS student is, currently, undergoing treatment for Leukemia, and some lower school students are cancer survivors.That joy is infectious and permeates love, hope and strength deep into the SBS community. 

Mrs.Herring added, “Our students hear about the love of Jesus every day. My hope is that they will have a heart for service and look for every day opportunities to serve and bless others.”