After Pictures!

Before Pictures!

 This was the back end of the room with the three bulletin boards...

 ...and the front of the room with the chalkboard.

 In the botton right corner in the red shirt is Ms. Robinson who helped me tremendously throughout my project. She is the assistant director of the Head Start program at Urban Day School.

This was taken after we had started working on the room.

                                    



Thank you

Today I wrote and mailed thank you notes to all the people who donated items or helped me with the various parts of my Girl Scout Gold Award project. I am SO thankful that kids came forward to donate gently used books and stuffed animals. I even got some clothes and puzzles. I am thankful for the adult books that were donated as well as all the fabric that was donated for the tote bags. It was very nice that I didn't have to spend any money to purchase fabric.

People are still dropping off books/stuffed animals at my home, so I guess I will be making another trip to Urban Day School soon.

Now I have to wait until the parents of Urban Day School's Head Start Program decide what kind of parent speakers they want this year, and then I will plan/organize two speaker times. The have monthly meeting times, so hopefully I can do them this fall yet.

Last work day at Urban Day schoolfor awhile

Tuesday, Aug. 22, I went in to Urban Day School for four hours to finish up my work in the classroom. We put up the rest of the bulletin board sayings and photos. We completed all the finishing touches in the room.Two kids at the school, a 4th grade girl and a 6th grade girl, who were in the day care at the school today, helped me put up the bulletin boards. They were very eager and helpful. They were really nice girls. It was kind of sad to leave the school for the last time for a while (probably until the parent workshop speaker times), but I was also happy that so much of my project was completed. It was a lot of work to do in a short period of time. I do feel a great sense of accomplishment with what I've done. The room looks great, lots of preschool kids have new things to help them with literacy and a stuffed anmal to love/hug/play with, a workbook to help them with the ABcs and numbers and their parents have several new ways to encourage them to be better parents/teachers to their children.

Another work day

Early Monday morning we took everything to Urban Day School, unloaded it with the help of one of the school's janitors. It took a  long time. Our van was totally packed except for three seats for my mom, my grandma and I. we worked a bit in the room, about an hour. I had high school commitments to get to. Ms. Robinson was home sick, so we did't get to talk to her. We did talk with another person at thes school that Ms. Robinson connected us with, Ms. Monica. Everyone at the school is very helpful, friendly and appreciative of my project.

Sunday with BLM

Sunday afternoon, my friend, and fellow Girl Scout troop member, BLM, came over and along with my mom's and my grandma D's help, we put a stuffed animal, a book with the recording of the book as well as a copy of the preschool workbook, the two parent brochures a jump rope, an emergency card magnet and another magnet picture frame that had the Pledge of Allegiance written on it into each tote bag. We tried hard to find a stuffed animal to pair up with each book, like a teddy bear with a book about teddy bears. This worked with about a third of the books which was great. This went a lot faster than what I predicted, so BLM stayed and helped me learn my color guard routine for school band. We also brought all the totebags and other collected items up from the basement and loaded them into my mom's van. We had lots of extra stuffed animals and books which my advisor/adminstrator at Urban Day School said they would give to other kids at registration.

Recording Books

 Recording 75 books was sure took a lot of time. I enjoyed reading in fun voices. Several people helped with this part of my project, although I wish a few more people would have helped. Rburnecording the books got to be a chore at the end. Then I had to burn all 75 of them onto CD-Rs, label each one and put it in a labeled envelope. It seemed to take forever. I spent much of my weekend doing it, but it had to get done; we had to deliver all the stuffed tote bags to the school on Monday as their school Head Start registration started on Tuesday. Finally, late Saturday evening the last book was put into it's envelope. Then I had to match up each book to the CD-R envelope. That took over an hour.

It felt good to be over half done with my project. I was starting to feel very proud of my accoomplishment and helping others in need.