With the Christmas Season quickly approaching, preparations are being made to “Light up Leitchfield” and the teens at the Grayson County Technology Center are doing their part to make some of the decorations extra special.

Four of the Christmas displays at James D. Beville City Park during the Light up Leitchfield celebration will be designed and built by the students of the various classes at the technology center.

The kick off for this event will be on Friday, December 4, at 6:00 p.m. and will include entertainment, guest speakers, refreshments and Santa. The displays will be shown throughout December from dusk until 10:00 p.m.

The students became involved with the Christmas displays four years ago after the Director of the Technology Center Cynthia Smith saw the displays at Rough River and brought the idea of the different classes working together to make a display for the center.

“We figured out how to put the display together and placed it so it was easily seen from the bridge at Rough River,’ said Smith. “It was so successful we did a second on the next year and had one here at the high school and one on the back side of the lake at the city park.”

The next year Leitchfield Mayor William H. Thomason called the technology center and asked if the students could do a display for the city. The teachers of the center and the students agreed to work on the project.

“This is just a really neat way for our kids to use the skills they learn in our classrooms for a project out in the real world,” said Smith. “There is nothing like watching a kid work on something like this and realize what effect he can make in the world. That is what I call an ‘Ah-Ha’ moment. It makes what we do as teachers special and there is no money in the world that can make up when you see a kid really get it.”

There will be over 25 individual displays at Beville Park that can be viewed as far away as the Western Kentucky Parkway beginning on December 4.

“This year we have four displays that will be ours from scratch,” said welding teacher Larry Baker. “What we do is make a drawing of what we want to build and then put it on projector.”

The students then trace the design onto plywood. The carpentry class cuts out the mold and gives it to the welding class who in turn make a jig to bend the metal around and weld the metal together to form the display.

The display maybe a Santa or a Christmas tree or a snowman, whatever the customer wants it to be.

Once the welding class gets the display welded together it is passed to the automotive department where it is painted and then the electrical department installs the lights.

“This is a really terrific project,” said auto technology teacher Roger Duvall, “because the kids are using the skills they learn here in class to do this community project. They will be able to drive through the park and show their parents, aunts, uncle, grandparents these displays and explain how they helped to put it together.”

This winter there will be four displays built by the technology students, one for the city, one for the Grayson County Tourism and two for the Technology Center itself.

The students have branched into repairing some of the older displays as well. Several of the lights and displays from years past were in need of some tender loving care and the students have taken on that task as well.

“We not only added lights to the new displays but we are repairing some of those that were part of Light up Leitchfield last year,’ said electricity teacher Paul Whitten. “Several of the ones the kids are currently working on has lights that had gone bad and we are fixing those.”

With the most of the projects complete for the 2009 Light Up Leitchfield the student have already begun taking orders from new businesses for next year.

“We can do these displays for less that $500 and if they are ordered now we can work on them year round instead of getting orders in September and October,” said Witten.

Anyone interested in arranging for a Christmas display to be built by the students is urged to contact the Technology Center at 270-359-3195.