Holiday jars spreading season’s greetings

With winter quickly approaching, most of us are still struggling with finding gifts for the holiday season. To help out, the special education department created Holiday Jars for teachers to buy as gifts.

Teachers could choose from a variety of six cookie mixes and three soup mixes. The jars only contained the dry ingredients for the recipes, so the receiver only needed to add the wet ingredients. The special education kids worked with measuring the dry ingredients which helped them practice fractions. They followed recipes to physically work on following directions and dividing ingredients, like pasta and sprinkles, to get a better understanding of math. To top off the gifts, the students decorated the jars with festive tissue paper and bows

“[The holiday jars are] special,” said Madeline Nieder, a special education teacher. “Our students made them which is really special because teachers are buying what kids have made.”

To promote the jars, the special education department created posters and held a taste testing event Nov. 17 for teachers to try their recipes. English teacher Jennifer Buemi, who attended the taste testing on Nov. 17, planned on buying one of the jars.

Senior Darien Preston, one of the students who made the jars, was at the event as well, explaining how she contributed to making the gifts.

“It was really fun to do,” Preston said. “I loved making them.”

Preston explained that she and the other students worked on the jars throughout the week of Nov. 10, and worked on fractions while adding the ingredients. By creating these jars, it taught Preston and other students how to utilize math and following directions in the world outside of high school.

“Our students completely made the jars,” Nieder said. “They made the shopping lists, advertisements for the taste testing event and they created the jar which was fun because for a couple days in class we just worked with these jars.”

This gives the students exposure to directions and measurements, two things that are frequently used in everyday life.  

The jars were sold from Nov. 17 to Nov. 29. They raised $642 that will be used to purchase the ingredients and jars for all the orders that were placed.