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.

Classroom work day

One day I had several helpers working in Room 101 at Urban Day School cleaning, taking down worn out stuff, putting up the background paper for the bulletin boards and figuring out what needed to be donw in the room to make it look nice, inviting and comfortable. We went to lunch at Cousin's Subs and went back to the room to work for several more hours. I talked more to to sevedral administrators.teachers at the school. They were vbery happy with how the room was starting to look.

It was a productive, tiring day, and I had high school volleyball try-outs that night too.

Sewing, helpers

I spent many hours cutting out fabric for the tote bags. I was not exact on the size of each one. I found helpers to help me sew. Altogether 75 tote bags were sewn from children's themed fabric. All the fabric was donated, so the only cost to make the totebags was the rope needed for the drawstring. One evening I went to a friend's house to watch a movie and we put drawstrings through lots of the totebags. It felt like a huge accomplishment when the last totebag was sewn/returned.

Work Begins

I did some brainstorming as to what all needed to be accomplished and chunked it so it didn't seem so overwhelming. My mom and I posted on Facebook that I needed items donated for the tote bags (fabric for the bags, gently used preschool children's book and gently used stuffed animals. The response was immediate. I received lots of stuffed animals and books. Additionally, I also went to several rummage sales that had children's books, clothes andstuffed animals and asked if they would donate what was left at the end of the sale to my project. I picked up lots of items this way also.

I created an 18 page preschool workbook, two parent brochures (How to Read to your Preschool Child" and "How to Motivate your Child to Love Learning".

Next meeting with Ms. Robinson and Ms. April

I went back to Urban Day school to talk about details of my project. It was decided that I would create a parent book shelf complete with parenting books to help them become better parents as well as fiction reading books they could check out, read and return. I would also clean the room, put up seven bulletin boards plus additional posters in the room, shorten curtains that were dragging on the ground (dangerous), sew a table runner for ther conference table that was in the room, sew 75 drawstring totebags and fill them with a book and a CD-R that the book was recorded on, a stuffed animal, a preschool workbook I would create, as well as two parent tip booklets I would create. Urban Day School would donate a jump rope to put in each of the bags. My head was swarming when I left the meeting that I had with the two administrators as well as several other employees I talked to at the school.

The work was ready to begin.

Brainstorming my Gold Award Project

It took me quite awhile to figure out what I wanted to actually accomplish for my Gold Award project. I knew I wanted to get started on it this summer while I had time. I brainstormed all the possibilities I mnight be interested in by looking on the Internet for project ideas as well as looking at Gold Award project ideas girls in WI have done in the past couple years. I narrowed it down to upgrading a naturetrail like the one at my old elementary school or creating a community center for underpriviaged kids. While riding on Brown Deer Rd in Milwaukee once day, I noticed a sign about a future teen community center coming to a building across the street from a Lutheran church. My mom and I stopped in to talk to person in charge of it. Their proposed dream was still in it's very preliminary stages and the building was too large of an undertaking for me. It would probably have taken a crew of paid workers months of daily work to renovate the prior restaurant into a teen center. After mulling this over for a day or so, I decided to look onward. My mom thought of Urban Day School as about a year ago our family donated about 250 books to their 12th Street campus. I called that campus and was told they already had a parent resource room, but they thought their other campus on 24th and Vliet might need a parent resource room created. I called them and they were very happy to have me create a parent resource room at their school. They were already using an empty classroom in that school to meet with parents for meetings, counseling, etc. but it was in pretty bad shape. About a week later, my mom and I visited the school and the administrators gave me the option of renovating one of two rooms, along with making and filling tote bags to give the children upon registration as well as organizing several parent workshop speaker evening programs. I chose to deal withthe Head Start program because the room looked in worse shape than the elementary school age room did. I also really liked the two Head Start administrators I talked with. I felt I could work and communicate well with them, especially Ms. Latrice Robinson. When I got home, I e-mailed Ms. Robinson to tell her of my decision. She was very excited.

Getting Started

This summer two friends and I completed all the preliminary work needed to start our Girl Scout Gold Awards. Our final project for Sisterhood was a Friendfship Club where seven girls and the three of us leaders got together to teach the girls about qualities of being and having good friends. We played games, had discussions and did a craft each of the three times we met. The girls really had a great time.