Flashback!

As one of our new mother filled out a survey this past Wednesday at the Tenderloin Children's Playground Summer Pilot Program - she looked at me and asked if I had taught a class on Treat street. She must have been referring to the City College Tick Tock class (Child Observation). I thought she looked vaguely familiar, but the biggest surprise of all was that in her purse she was carrying one of the projects that we had made over a year ago - a little shape book called "Bebé Payaso". I was very proud of this project which I came up with for a Saturday event - and was able to use the leftover materials in my classes. It warms my heart to know that this book has been valuable enough to be carried around by the mother to occupy her daughter on outings for the past year or more. :)

-Dawn Noelle

At a loss...

Friday, our second day of the Tenderloin pilot summer program, brought our first vietnamese families - 4 out of 10. Being bilingual I have grown accustomed to being able to communicate with those who don't speak much English but this time felt at a loss in helping our families to fill out surveys and library card applications. The project, music and story time, however, seemed to transcend language barriers - switching back and forth between Spanish and English - I do wonder if this is going to be confusing for the children, but getting the books (all bilingual for this program) in their hands is definitely worth the effort.

-Dawn Noelle

Summer Program!

It is exciting to be a part of our pilot summer program at the Tenderloin Children's Playground and Recreation Center. We didn't get the final go ahead on use of this site until the last minute - but even with only two days to promote our class, we started out with 7 families (11 children under the age of 5). We'll be meeting Wednesdays and Fridays from 11am-12noon for four weeks (July 21 - August 13). In preparing for this class, I was very excited to find photo albums at SCRAP, as well as some green contact paper to cover them with - and our Reading Tree "Read" stickers. They look pretty sharp and are a great addition to distribute to families for storing the handouts they receive with each class. I was prepared for a bilingual class due to the diversity of the population in the Tenderloin, but was surprised to have mostly Spanish speaking families present. The staff at this site are great, especially Kay Rodrigues who helped me find all I needed to set up class and took care of putting things away when we were done. I'm looking forward to the next four weeks and hopefully a transition to a fall program with these families.

-Dawn Noelle