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It's summer break! Who needs coats?
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Times photo: Brian Gray Fourth-graders Kristy Bennett, from left, Stephanie Haberman, and fifth-graders Brent Foley and Tanner Thompson look through some of the items on the lost-and-found tables Friday at Abraham Lincoln Accelerated Learning Academy in Monroe. Everything lost by students and found by the teachers was put on tables throughout the year. Anything not claimed is taken to St. Vincent dePaul. Friday was the last day of school for all Monroe schools.
MONROE - It's the last day of school. Do you know where your child's mittens are?

If your child attends Abraham Lincoln Accelerated Learning Academy, her mittens could be on one of the two tables just outside of the office

His coats and hats could be there, too. So could a sweatshirt and snowsuit.

It would stand to reason that if a child leaves with two boots in the morning, they would return home with two boots in the afternoon. It doesn't always work that way, however.

Forgetfulness seems to be most common in the winter. Every morning before kids go to school they put on their boots, mittens or gloves, and their winter coats.

Sometime during the day, however, the children get separated from these things and everything they leave behind on the playground, or on the floor in the hallway.

And they never miss them.

The items are in good shape, and by the end of the year the small piles of clothing and winter items, like the children who wear them, continue to grow. By the time school ended Friday, there were two tables covered with boots, shirts, coats, hats and mittens. Under the tables were boxes of more apparel. Very few of the boots and gloves had a partner.

A few of the fourth- and fifth-grade students who looked at the pile admitted they never check to see if any of the items belong to them.

Fifth-grader Tanner Thompson joked as he held up a shirt that obviously wouldn't fit him.

"I think this is mine," he laughed.

"I think this is yours," his classmate Kelsea Blom teased as she held up a pink coat.

Fourth-grader Trevor Aebly looked through the pile and recognized a shirt, but it wasn't his.

"Hey, this is Caleb's," he said, as if he just found a lost treasure. "I'm taking it out to him."

Nothing on the school's lost and found tables is thrown away. Everything is donated to St. Vincent dePaul.