When someone says Okarche I automatically think of chicken, cinnamon rolls, basketball, baseball, and speech team. But there’s more. It’s a place where seeds of potential have been planted in the most unique ways.
I found myself FaceTiming with Ginny Grellner which is a fat finger story in itself! Ginny is one of Okarche’s 1st-grade teachers. She uses a crocheted Heggerty Hedgehog to help teach phonemic awareness each day. It can be monotonous so he helps teach the lesson and a student gets to keep Heggerty for the remainder of the day.
Heggerty always has something to hold or to wear for each season, all are crocheted. He has a little Debbie Christmas tree, snowballs, a Santa hat, and two birthday hats. If it’s a child’s birthday they get to choose which hat for Heggerty and hold him that day. There’s also camping gear, a raincoat, books, a blanket, an Easter bunny, peeps, and shamrocks.
Ginny’s mother, Cindy Cochran is the elf behind the scenes lending her crocheting talents. Last year she crocheted each student a shamrock and a bouquet of flowers that unraveled into a necklace.
Ginny said they often read the stories “Little Hedgehog” , a series by Christina Butler. She said this was Heggerty’s second year in her classroom. This year she added something different. With the help of her own personal crocheting elf, she had each child color a stocking cap on paper with the colors they wanted.
Cindy took each unique coloring and crocheted a stocking cap in the colors the littles used. The Elf gave the littles a memory and a gift. Cindy extends her Elf crocheting beyond the classroom between baby blankets for coworkers and friends, she also crochets a variety of stocking caps for the Love Family Women’s Center at Mercy Hospital. Again she gives them a homemade gift and a precious memory as well.
Our crocheting Elf has also been known to slip a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to the school resource officer when he hasn’t had lunch. In 2025 look for the elves among us. They don’t all have pointy ears.
