When I Help at School

My two days per week spent within the locked school fence are full, full, full. I spend the mornings with the Third Grade class and the afternoons with the First Grade class. But I also do some popping into other classrooms to help with kiddos that need a little more one-on-one.

Some days fly by while others feel like the longest ever.

I get to read with my Third Grader's high group both days I'm there, and love hanging with those six kids. We have great discussions about how they see life in connection with the stories read (Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot, Buffalo Song, Mary McCloud Bethune, to name a few).

And then there are the projects... Lots of copying, laminating, sorting, filing, and generally making myself useful in ways that free up the teachers to do what they have been hired to do. I get to float around, in and out of buildings, brushing shoulders with other volunteers and staff alike. It is a good community of people committed to doing the best they can for the student body. I have plenty of issues with the way schools are run in our country (lets not get on that soapbox today), but have no complaints whatsoever about what the giving hearts at our school do with the limitations handed them.

Much of what I do isn't photo worthy, but I'm going to start snapping pictures of those that let me channel my creativity, so I can share them with you.

First up... for the Third Grade classroom, I was given a small and very poor black and white printout of a "Parts of a Paragraph" hamburger that someone had created digitally and posted online. This teacher was also the Third Grader's First Grade teacher, so she knows me well enough to hand me the paper and say, "Could you make this into a poster? Like a big one? And colorful? And then laminate it so I can hang it on the wall? Oh, and Mrs. ______ would like one too..." knowing that she will most likely be happy with what I come up with.

I give you:

Yeah, I know... wonky and hand-made, but those two hamburgers took me ALL day, so I'm pretty darn proud.

And for the First Grade classroom, I got to take my camera and laptop to capture then edit then size correctly then cut out their darling little heads. To glue onto the bodies that they had colored.

Fortunately, this was on a different day from the hamburger posters, because it took SUCH a long time, but when all was said and done, they were so adorable I wanted to take them all home...

Their bobble head creations were pasted onto construction paper along with a writing project to send home. My girls' project turned out like this: