Martin Luther King Jr. challenged people to step up and help others and question what they can do to make the world a better place. It’s not too early to talk about these concepts with preschoolers and we’ve discovered that children at A Child Becomes have big hearts! We have found organizations both near and far that need help, and we have developed some simple projects that allow the children and their families to give back.
Play Yard Clean Up
On Saturday, February 4th parents and staff rallied to help transform the school’s play yard. We started at 9AM on a gorgeous and sunny Seattle morning and had completed the work by 1PM. About 40 people showed up with rakes, shovels, dump trucks, buckets, plants, bulbs, wheel barrows and most importantly, a GREAT attitude! We were able to clear out all of the gravel and replace it with cedar play chips – MUCH softer according to all of the kids who tried it out for us. Shrubs were trimmed, trees were pruned, junk was hauled, gardens were prepped, the shed was cleaned out – what a fun day. Thank you to everyone who helped make it happen!
Book Drive for South Africa
This year we are continuing a project that we started last year, a book drive for to help build a library in South Africa. 93% of schools in South Africa do not have libraries! We have a base of about 370 books already and are hoping to collect 1000 total books. We will also need to raise $500 to ship the books over to South Africa. We have joined an organization, African Library Project, in New Orleans that will match us up with a school and then ship the books for us – which means they’ll handle the processing through customs and distribution.
Our books will benefit a primary school in Swaziland, a small kingdom in Southern Africa. The primary school teaches children from preschool to 4th grade. The books we collect should be suitable for this age group. Look for updates as we progress and photos from Teacher Shelley’s trip to visit the school in Swaziland.
Our deadline for collecting books and funds is April 6th, 2012. If we do not make this deadline, we will continue the drive into the fall – but we know we can do it!
Book guidelines
- Baby board books
- Children’s picture books
- Children’s fiction and non-fiction
- Early readers
- BIG books
- Teacher’s resource books for school libraries
- Children’s dictionaries/picture dictionaries
- Encyclopedias less than 15 years old
- Children’s encyclopedias/picture encyclopedias
- Children’s thesauruses
- Paperback textbooks in math, English, geography, health, and science at appropriate level (kindergarten to 6th grade)
- Books with universal themes (friendships, animals, love)
- Children’s health books
- Accurate up-to-date atlases
- Books about Africa or African-Americans
- Educational children’s science and literary magazines in good condition
Toy Drive for Toys for Tots
Children bring in unwrapped toys for either a boy or a girl during the holiday season. Toys are over flowing this holiday season with more than 50 toys piled high in the Social Hall! When our collection drive is over, we load up wagons and pull our holiday donations to the fire station down the street where we hand over the toys to the fire fighters. Typically we get a tour of the station and the kids get to sit in a fire engine! We head back to the school for hot cocoa and a holiday sing-a-long! It’s a great lesson in sharing, and is always festive and fun!
Food Drive for Northwest Harvest
Children from all classes bring in non-perishable food items as we collect food for Northwest Harvest. We have added a new element to the drive this year, a Snail’s Pace Race to meet the finish line! Kids bring their food into the Social Hall and line it up by groups of 10. We watch to see how long it takes to get to 50, 100, 120, 200…! It’s an exciting way to count by 10 and help those in our community at the same time! Northwest Harvest picks up all the food at the end of the race!
