FARMINGTON — A group of Farmington sixth-graders, motivated by their teacher, has taken up knitting to help keep a contingent of Ecuadorian senior citizens warm.

The students saw their teacher, Jason Anderson, making the hats for an organization that aids those in need in Ecuador, Una Obra de Amor, and decided they wanted to help. So far, Anderson and his students have made more than 110 hats as part of the initiative, Warming Hearts and Heads in Ecuador, with a few more likely to come next week, before winter break.

"This is all their idea," said Anderson. They saw him knitting, he said, "and they asked to learn how. They asked to donate."

The kids attend Eagle Bay Elementary, a Spanish-English dual-language immersion school in Farmington, and as part of their instruction, they've been studying the culture and traditions of Spanish-speaking countries. Anderson's wife is from Ecuador, according to Todd Dinsmore, a Davis School District media specialist, which spurred the desire to help those in the country.

The hats will be sent to a home that serves senior citizens in a mountainous area of Ecuador subject to rolling power outages and cold weather, Dinsmore said. They'll likely be boxed and shipped later this month.

Thirty-plus students have taken part in the effort, some of them citing a desire to help.

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"It honestly makes me feel really good inside because I love doing other things for people," said Brooklyn, one of Anderson's students. "It just makes me so happy, especially around Christmas."

Anderson has been taken aback by his students' interest. The public donated $600 to help buy yarn and looms for the project. "It's been a very humbling experience for me. I'm very proud of these students because at no point did I even ask them to donate," he said.

Contributing: Chuck Wing, Isaac Hale

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