Youths join with seniors to make holiday ornaments

link Joshua Lucero: Staff photo

Portales Recreation Center’s after-school program participants get to work painting ornaments for the mayor’s Christmas tree Wednesday with the help of senior center volunteers.

Paint and smiles were abundant Wednesday afternoon at the Portales Senior Citizens Center as volunteers and children came together to decorate Christmas ornaments for the mayor’s Christmas tree.

Portales Recreation Director Jodi Diaz said the Portales Recreation Center’s after-school program kids teamed up with senior center ceramics class volunteers to create unique ornaments to go on the mayor’s Christmas tree at city hall.

Diaz said this is the first year for the after-school program to paint ornaments, but plans to add painting with the ceramics class to the program’s curriculum.

“It’s good for our kids,” she said, “It adds something not normally offered and puts their imagination to work.”

Diaz said the ornaments and mayor’s tree will be put up in city hall during the first week of December.

Senior center volunteer Jeanne Barnes said she likes having the kids at the center to paint and hopes some of them pick it up as a hobby.

“They’re just fun. It’s like having twenty-two grandchildren here,” Barnes said.

Six-year-old Chanelle Ellis painted a stocking and a snowflake and said she wants to go look at them on the tree when they’re finished.

“It makes it pretty,” Ellis said of painting her ornaments.

Ellis said she wanted to take some of her ornaments home for her tree.