St. Joseph Students Use Rainbow Loom to Help Other Kids

It sounds like a treat for a lot of children: being able to take part of the school day with Rainbow Loom, a crafting kit that's popular with kids all over the country.

And that's what was happening Friday afternoon at St. Joseph the Worker School, as a group of third graders sat at their desks, turning dozens and dozens of little rubber bands into rainbow bracelets.

It was a fun day, and one the students had been looking forward to all week, their teachers said.

But there was a higher motive at work here as well: the St. Joseph students were making the bracelets for other kids, pediatric cancer patients at Lehigh Valley Hospital, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and others.

The idea came about thanks to Upper Macungie second grader Molly Duborg, who wanted to do something to help kids with cancer.

She had gotten into Rainbow Loom this summer, like thousands of other kids around the country. The craft kid took off this year, the creation of Michigan inventor Choon Ng and his daughters.

Molly's mother, Christine, put the word out on Facebook, and things grew from there. Molly is friends with third graders, so she got bumped up a year—temporarily—Friday afternoon to work on the project.

It was a good activity for the children even if you put aside the goal of cheering up young cancer patients.

"They're teaching each other, and they're sharing," she said.

The students are working with the Coco Foundation, a Bethlehem-based pediatric cancer non-profit, to get the bracelets delivered to patients.

And their work wasn't complete. Students were expected to return to looming when classes resume Monday.