Arizona students design Christmas ornaments for White House tree

WADDELL – It may not snow in the Valley for Christmas, but some Arizona kids sent their holiday spirit all the way to Washington, D.C. this year.

Fifth-grade students at American Leadership Academy (ALA) West Foothills designed Christmas ornaments that are now hanging on the state’s designated tree at the White House this holiday season.

About 15 students’ designs displayed at White House

The school’s art teacher Kelly Wheelis explained that the students designed the ornaments last year, with the now-sixth-graders taking the project very seriously.

“Some of them did the Arizona flag. Some of them did, you know, like a cactus landscape… I had a couple of them that we had just done a desert landscape with a starry night theme based on Van Gogh,” she said.

About 15 students were chosen for the display. One of them was Kayley Smith, who said she recently rode the Polar Express in northern Arizona and used the experience as inspiration.

“My ornament was the Polar Express, and I did the Polar Express because it was like a beautiful magic moment in Arizona and I really loved it,” she said.

Kelsey Kredit is another student whose ornament was chosen for display.

“I put the mountains with the sunset and the cactus because I think when you look at the mountains at night, it’s really cool… I see the sunset and that’s exactly what it looks like for me. It’s really cool,” she said.

The ornaments were put on display at the National Christmas Tree Lighting on Dec. 4, 2025. The art project’s prompt was “What Makes Your State Beautiful?”

The students said it was a great opportunity to represent their state on a national level.

“I was really so surprised because I was like, ‘The White House, wow,'” Kredit said. “It’s very cool to do that and I probably won’t get this opportunity again. So, I was trying to really take it seriously and tried my best on it.”

Wheelis said she hopes the school gets this opportunity again.

“I thought it was a great opportunity for them to be part of something so amazing like that and they were really into it. We ended up doing three class sessions of them just working on that,” she said.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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