Tag Archives: May Day

May Day & Clifford’s Kindergarteners: Gifts For Our Neighbors

Kindergartener Coco Lindars is all smiles holding her own May Day basket creation!

Clifford parent Julianne Lindars spearheaded a project to celebrate May Day this year, which directly involved our school’s neighbors. Julianne wanted to focus on all those people who live near our school, and have to deal with heavy traffic and parking for nine months of the year.

Working with our three Kindergarten teachers and parents, Julianne came up with a plan from scratch: Clifford’s littlest students decorated and colored miniature “baskets” made of paper, shaped into cones with small handles. Julianne and her family arranged a variety of flowers into roughly 80 dainty bouquets, and these mini-floral arrangements were placed in the cones. An adorable message from the Kindergartners was added to the outside of the cone. (Note: Every year, two of the Kinder classes typically work on a May Day basket craft project.)

On the morning of May 1st, Julianne and another Clifford parent strolled around neighboring streets — Clifford Avenue, Scenic, Lemoore, Timothy, and Eaton — and delivered the flower baskets right to our neighbors’ doors. In a couple of cases, neighbors saw these parents walking around with flowers, and Julianne handed flowers right into their hands! The neighbors were delighted. And some residents contacted the school to pass along their gratitude.

The May Day basket-drop was a pilot program this year, and the plan for next year is to have Clifford’s First Grade students go on a field trip around the immediate neighborhood to leave the baskets on residents’ door knobs and welcome mats!

Heartfelt thanks to Julianne for dreaming this up — and making it happen. Julianne pored over aerial maps, trekked to local florists, reviewed permission slips (for next year, we hope), and recruited parents to help.

Thank you also to our Kinder teachers: Mrs. Wilkerson, Mrs. Edelstein, and Mrs. Overbey, for their willingness to engage the kids in basket creation! Big kudos to Anjanette Lundell for working on the beautiful stickers — designing and printing them.

Finally, a shout-out to Ralston Florist in Belmont and Trader Joe’s in San Carlos for donating buckets and buckets of flowers to us!

Coco Lindars pauses for the camera before leaving a floral treat for a Clifford neighbor!