Making a difference: Community Service Project

Members from The Lansdowne YMCA at St John's were treated to a special story time when the eighth grade class from The Hill Top Preparatory School assisted with a community service project. Each student in the eighth grade are doing a project to make a difference in the community and one student focused on literacy. Stephanie planned a book drive at her school, with books being donated to Philadelphia Reads, and a trip to the library. The entire eighth grade class would read classic picture books and work with the preschoolers to create art projects.

The eighth graders were broken up into groups of two and each group read and did activities inspired by the following books:
Horton Hears A Who- by Dr. Seuss
-Make a clover out of pipe cleaners

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Numeroff
-Make a cookie out of paper plates and crayons or markers

Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin
-Making a cow mask out of paper plates, popsicle sticks and markers.
At this station the preschoolers were so enamored by the typewriter used as a prop that no masks were made!

Some children NEVER saw or used a typewriter!

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendek
-Make a scary monster mask out of paper plates.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
-The eighth graders read the story using a puppet made for us by a friend of the library/ For the art activity, we drew pictures of caterpillars using different color backgrounds.

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
-Draw an entire world in purple (or favorite color) crayon

A dino from the book...ROAR!

The children from the YMCA were broken up into groups of two to three children and each group of children was able to to rotate through each group of  the eighth graders reading. After hearing the story, each child was given art supplies to create or recreate a small scene from each book.

Without exaggeration, the collaboration was such a success! The YMCA group loved the individual attention and enjoyed hearing the stories. One child asked when could we do it again!

We loved the book suggestions so much that we used them for Wee Reads and The Book Bunch!


Thank you to the staff and students of The Hill Top Preparatory School for providing such a great storytime and thank you to the staff and students of the Lansdowne YMCA at St John's for participating!