A Dutch primary school teacher dying of cancer is overseeing one last project among her pupils: They are making her coffin.

Eri van den Biggelaar, 40, has just a few weeks to live after being diagnosed last year with an aggressive form of cervical cancer.

She asked the woodwork teacher, a friend, to build a coffin for her. “Why don’t you let the children make it?” Erik van Dijk replied.

Now, pupils who normally plane wood for baskets and place mats have been helping with the finishing touches. They have already sawed more than 100 narrow boards and glued them together. Only the lid needs to be completed.

The coffin now stands in the middle of one of the classrooms.

Although Ms. Biggelaar can no longer teach, she has looked at sketches of the coffin and is being kept up to date about it by pupils, ages 4 to 11, who visit her at home.

“Life and death belong together,” she said. “The children realized that when I explained it to them. I didn’t want to be morbid about it. I wanted them to help me.”

Parents of the children involved all gave their consent. But in neighboring Belgium, the project has caused an uproar. Belgian therapists specializing in bereavement have complained that young children are not able to appreciate fully the consequences of the death of a friend, grandparent, or parent.

However, Ms. Biggelaar thinks that the uproar shows how necessary it is to tell children about death, mourning, and pain.

When her grandfather died, she felt lonely, and no one spoke to her, she said. “As a little child, I stood with flowers at his grave and did not know why people were crying.”