For the third year, students in the kindergarten through fifth-grades are participating in the American Cancer Society's Daffodil Days.

"We are teaching the concept of compassion," says John Park, who teaches fourth and fifth grade at the school.

Hacienda gardening parents initiated the school program three years ago, and they continue to organize and run the event each spring.

The students decorate blue glass vases with tissue paper and mod podge. This year, the Santa Clara County chapter of the American Cancer Society ordered 4,000 vases to be distributed throughout the Bay Area. Students in county schools are decorating 550. The majority of the vases, 500, are being decorated by Hacienda children.

"I've had cancer in the family, and most of these kids have had or known someone with cancer," Park says. "It's not something abstract; it's real."

This personal understanding hit home for the students in 2005.

"Last year, there was a school dad who was diagnosed with cancer," says project coordinator Janice Landreth. "His daughter was in one of the classes that participated in the Daffodil Days project, and he received a vase decorated by one of her classmates."

The program is something easy, and everyone, regardless of age, can participate, she says.

After the vases are decorated, the parents take them back to the American Cancer Society. There, volunteers at the nonprofit agency put daffodils in the decorated vases and deliver them to cancer patients in hospitals, treatment centers and nursing homes throughout the Bay Area.

Willow Glen resident and parent Mari Ekbald has worked with cancer patients for years and says often they just need something small to make them smile, a little personal warmth that lets them know someone is thinking of them.

"This program improves the community and the kids' self-value," Ekbald says. "It shows them that they are capable of giving at this age, and makes cancer patients and older people feel connected to the youth."

There is another benefit to the project, Ekbald says. People realize that there are "really nice kids out there."

For more information about the American Cancer Society or to volunteer, visit www.americancancersociety.org.