Beacon Heights students decorate Utah tree in Washington

Out of all the schools in Utah, Beacon Heights Elementary was chosen for a singular privilege this holiday season.

The two sixth-grade classes at the school spent a month during the fall creating original ornaments that now adorn the Utah tree, which is part of the National Christmas Tree Display in President’s Park, Washington, D.C. The entire display will stay up through the end of December and features one tree for every state and territory of the U.S. -- each decorated by a local school -- planted around the National Tree.

“Having their work be the only one to represent Utah was a unique opportunity for them, and they were really excited about it,” Beacon Heights art specialist Donna Pence said.

Each of the school’s ornaments represent the work of four students. Under Pence’s direction, every student in the sixth grade made a water color painting of either a desert or city scene to represent Southern and Northern Utah. Each student also wrote a related haiku poem in class with his or her regular teacher. The finished ornaments combined these starter elements, with a desert painting on one side and a city on the other, and a haiku on both sides -- each taken from a different student -- and all encased in a plastic ball.

“We’re really excited that our ornaments got sent to Washington,” student Ada Toydemir said. Knowing that kind of makes up for the fact that he and his classmates will not get their ornaments back, he added.

“I’m happy because the people in Washington get to see our artwork,” student Hunter Hallstrom said.

The National Christmas Tree Display is an old tradition, started when President Calvin Coolidge lit one tree in 1923. Since then, it has grown into a month-long event with dozens of trees and national participation.

Beacon Heights was chosen to participate out of all of Utah’s schools partly because of its involvement with the Beverley Taylor Sorenson arts program, which has done wonders for arts education in Utah, Pence said.

“They felt that deserved some recognition nationally,” she said.

The Sorenson program not only puts art specialists of various disciplines in elementary schools where they would not likely be found otherwise, it has the specialists work side-by-side with the schools’ classroom teachers. Students learn their regular academic subjects with the classroom teachers, and then those ideas are reinforced by the arts specialists with related projects.

For the ornaments, it was the students’ language arts that benefitted from matching up the haikus with the watercolor paintings, Pence said.

Pence herself also had the opportunity to make an ornament of her own, which is displayed on the White House Visitor Center tree with those of the art teachers from all the other participating schools.