HIGHLANDS RANCH - In Mrs. Lilly Jamison's kindergarten class, the students are learning to tell the time. They are working on the basics like reading and putting sentences together. It would be easy to focus on all that they don't know yet.
But we would fail to see what they can teach us.
"I just knew we could do something really big!" Addy Hinton said.
She just turned 6 and she got her 23 kindergarten classmates excited about her project to send care packages to the troops overseas.
Then she took her idea to the entire school - all 750 students at Northridge Elementary.
Addy stood next to her principal, Elizabeth Morris on Thursday morning and held the PA system phone to make an announcement. Her little voice filled the school.
"Hello Northridge, this is Addy Hinton," she said.
She put her finger on her notes following each word slowly and carefully.
"Thank you for all your help collecting items for the soldiers in Afghanistan," she said.
Then with a smile she said, "Please bring your items to the main office now."
In a matter of seconds, the halls were full. From sixth graders on down to the youngest students, they came with their arms full of gifts to fill care packages for servicemen and women.
The donation box was so full there were a dozen bags on the ground around it. All of that because of one kindergartener who was confident in what she knows: She loves to support "her soldiers" and she wanted her whole school to help.
Fourth grader Andrea Cushman was impressed.
"I would never think that a kindergartner would ever have an idea as great as this," Andrea said.
"We all got on board. The staff is excited, the kids were eager to participate, so it started that huge effort to support our soldiers," Morris said.
"I thought there was going to be five or six things, but there are like a hundred or a billion!" Addy said.
Nate Young, a fourth grader, says the students were excited to help.
"People were everywhere. It was like there was a movie star here," Nate said.
That would be Addy. She was lost in a sea of "big kids," but was still the star of the day.
She isn't thinking about that. She is thinking about the men and women she calls "her soldiers."
Addy giggled as she looked through the bags piled up in the donation box.
"Whoa! There is a lot of candy. There are magazines and toothbrushes. Here are chocolate chip cookies. Those might melt a little," she said. "This makes me really happy."
Addy knows it will make "her soldiers" happy too.
If you'd like to get involved, you can visit http://patriotslunchclub.wordpress.com/about/ or email laura@amf100.org.
(KUSA-TV © 2011 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)