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.