Mom creates custom winter hats for Elm Street School kindergarteners

LACONIA — Right before lunch and recess, all the antsy kindergartners from Elm Street Elementary School gathered in the hallway outside their classrooms for a surprise. A few weeks ago, the students each colored in a template for their ideal winter hat. Fast forward to Wednesday morning, now their teachers stood in the middle of the group, in front of a closed box. One teacher, Elizabeth Weeks, asked her students to guess what was inside. The answers included toys, rats and snakes. Shortly after the kids made their guesses, the teachers started handing out knitted hats that brought their colorful creations to life. Sarah Lamontagne, the mother of two boys who attended Elm Street School, make all 51 hats for the kindergarteners.

“Oh my gosh, I thought it was awesome she wanted to do something to give back,” said Principal Eric Johnson, who popped into the hallway. “And it was awesome she thought of us and wanted to help out the school.”

Lamontagne needed a lot of time to make the hats. Most kids drew rainbow-colored hats, which took 20 to 25 minutes each to knit, while solid-colored hats took 10 to 15 minutes. To help finish the hats more quickly, she enlisted her friend Cindy Goldstein, who runs her own knitting business called Goldie’s Girl Gifts. Goldstein taught Lamontagne how to knit last November when she got a knitting machine for her birthday. While she helped ease the workload, there were still a lot of hats to knit. Since Lamontagne was so new to knitting, it was a challenge for her. The children had unrestricted choice of colors, so she did her best to match the drawings.

“My biggest fear was that I wouldn't be able to match them properly or give the right colors,” she said. “I think I did pretty well.”

Lamontagne first saw the idea on social media, where someone would knit hats for a class in third or fourth grade, or a parent might knit a hat for their child. But she didn’t see anyone doing it for kindergartners, or for a whole grade level. So, as she began knitting, the idea to go big became more prevalent. She eventually reached out to the school to ask if she could do it, and they said yes. But a goal this big intimidated her.

“I'm never going to be able to do this,” she thought. “But then I'm like, ‘You know what, I'm going to try and if I fail, I fail. But I will never know unless I try it.’”

As someone who was raised to always give back to her community, Lamontagne wanted to see the project through. Lamontagne’s father was a guidance counselor at Laconia High School, and he would see a lot of children wearing the same clothes day after day. Her father would send her to buy clothes, hats and food to help those who needed it. Elm Street School accepts winter clothing to give to any students who may need it. While this hats project isn’t directly associated with that, Johnson said it helps all the students.

“It's always an issue of kids not having the right winter gear,” he said. “Now we know, all of kindergarten, they have something.”

Lamontagne is a single mother who is unable to work most traditional jobs and is supported by social security disability. She has a brain condition called Chiari malformation, where the lower part of the brain — the cerebellum — extends into the spinal canal. Lamontagne says her hands and legs go numb daily and she gets horrible migraines. She is also prone to seizures. This knitting project gave her something productive to do while she was home, and hopes doing this will raise awareness about how she is as capable as anyone, despite her condition.

“I want to spread the word just because I can't go out there and work a physical 9-to-5 job ... I have a little extra I can give back,” she said. “And to see the smile on these kids’ faces. They get so excited.”

This is not Lamontagne’s last knitting project; she is only just beginning. Next week, she plans to do the same thing for the kids in the Huot early childhood education program and preschool and is also knitting hats for the special education program at Exeter High School.

Allowing children to see their creativity come to fruition is important to Lamontagne, and she hopes the students will cherish these hats in the years to come.

“I could have just gone and bought random hats or made it at a company, or whatever,” she said. “But I tried to do something different.”

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The Sunshine Effect is a series in The Laconia Daily Sun highlighting the people and organizations working to improve our communities through volunteering and fundraising. We believe that telling their stories will encourage others to support their work, and launch new charitable efforts of their own. Have a suggestion for someone making a difference we should feature? Share it with us at laconiadailysun.com/sunshineeffecttip.