ready to learn

i participated in the "ready to learn" program once again.

steven was looking for volunteers and was able to round up a pretty considerable group of us to volunteer. we even had a special denotation of "FOS" (friends of steven) under out names on our name tags.

the program is ran by the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce, and steven's non-profit group is partnered with the LAJCC. every month on a saturday they go to the 49th street elementary school in los angeles to read and help with a craft program with 1st graders from that school.

that week being the first week of the new school year the kids were fresh out of kindergarten and their reading levels were not at the level where they could read an entire book themselves so i had my student point out objects in a clifford book and hopefully it helped him learn by association. he did seem to enjoy the book though. many of the students come from a family where english isn't the first language which explained why when he got excited about a part in the book he would start out with english but end up explaining the book to me in spanish which was pretty adorable.

after the clifford book i can see my student was exhausted from reading so i read the "the gingerbread man" to him. it was cute to see him get immersed in the story and start rhyming along the lines "you'll never catch me, i'm the gingerbread man," along with the story.

after the one to one reading, the entire group of kids sat and listened to a reading of "the very hungry caterpillar," if it's been a while, its the book where a caterpillar goes on an eating binge and cocoons up and ends up being a butterfly. afterwards the kids had a choice of between making caterpillar for craft time. to my surprise many of the boys wanted to make a butterfly. craft time was fun, and i had refrain from stifling his creativity by taking over the project, help too much and giving too much input. so i was there more as a guide. like any other science fair you can see the kids who had a little too much help from an adult.

after all that it was pizza for lunch! we started at 10am and we finished at 1. it was easily the best 3 hours of the month.