Location: House Of The Good Shepherd
Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2014; 6:30-7:45 pm
As has been the case during my
visits to various places this winter, it was extremely slippery on the
sidewalks as I walked to HGS. Even
if my cautious approach, I was early enough and arrived to find that Wilson was
opening doors for everyone.
Besides him there were other regulars like Galen, Marc and our Volunteer
leader Tanya. In fact, it looked
like it was going to be a full house.
I chatted with Galen about the Chicago Cares project that she leads and
which teaches kids Geography. She
mentioned that ‘Target’ had given the
project a grant whose objective was to educate on the various U.S. States. She said that the problem was the book which was being used, since it did not have information on all the states. I said that perhaps it was written
before the Union expanded!
The kids for the junior program
arrived and as usual flocked towards Galen. After that group left, Tanya led the rest of us down to the
reading area, where unlike the previous times, the kids were already
there. Many kids went over and
hugged the adults that they already knew and obviously I wasn’t one of
them. We got the crates of books
out and Tanya said that we should go around and introduce ourselves. We did that and then the kids had go
and select a book. I asked a little
girl if she wanted to read with me and she said no, and that she had
picked another guy. Aah, the
age and the situation may change but the words remain the same! Marc was popular as usual and had 2
kids reading with him. I saw
another girl trying to select a book and I waited for her, hoping that she
would pick me…but she didn’t. So
in the end it was me waiting with Wilson and Tanya, while all the other
volunteers started reading with the kids.
 |
| Is that a monster? |
Tanya said that we would be
making paper snowflakes as our activity after the reading, and I said that since
I wasn’t doing anything, I could practice making those. This involved folding the paper in
halves and then making
some cuts so that when you unfold, you get a pattern that was like a
snowflake. Both, Tanya and I struggled
to get the exact folds and as I was doing that, Wilson came and asked if I
would be willing to read with a little boy. I was more than delighted and hurried over before he could
change his mind. I asked him what
book he wanted to read and he was mumbling something, but did not have a
specific choice. I saw a book on
cats and asked if he wanted that and he said that he didn’t like cats. He finally chose a book called ‘The Good Little Girl’, and that was
because there was someone on the cover whom he referred to as a “monster”!
We sat down on the couch and as we opened the book, I could
tell that he wasn’t going to be totally invested in the actual reading. In fact, I saw that he was making up
his own words, rather than following the ones on the page. He was more interested in finding out
about the monster and on all of the pages; he would try to associate everything
with the monster. I started
reading the book to him and found it to be quite verbose. So instead of reading everything
verbatim, I decided to tell him the story instead. It was about a girl “Miranda”,
who becomes jealous and rude when she doesn’t get what she wants, and is taken
over by an evil looking girl, “Lucretia”
– the kid’s monster. Now “Miranda” is trapped inside “Lucretia”, and as “Lucretia” becomes more bossy, “Miranda”
realizes her mistake and how she had been nasty towards everyone. As with every other children’s stories,
there was a moral to the tale and a nice ending. In the book “Miranda”
had a dog and a teddy bear. I
asked my kid if he likes teddies and he said yes. I asked him what he would name a teddy if he had one and he
said something that sounded like “Umpa”. He then said that I was like “Umpa”. A teddy then. That was a first!
 |
| Looks like fun |
My kid was distracted and looking at what was happening with
his friends around us. He called
someone stupid and I said that it was wrong to say that, reminding him of the
story that we had just read. He
wanted to take a look at the pictures again and whenever someone hideous
looking appeared, he would call it a monster and ask me to read that page
again. Even with these multiple
readings, he never had much interest and so we went and picked another book
called, “Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot vs.
The Voodoo Vultures From Venus”.
That was a mouthful if there ever was any! I think the reason he chose this was because of the "Robot" and he was definitely interested at first. Once again, we sat down and looked at the pictures, while I
read some of the relevant parts of the story. He liked it when the "Vultures" appeared, perhaps because they reminded him of the monsters.
We struggled with this for a bit, till Tanya announced that
it was time for the Arts and Crafts activity and we grabbed some chairs at the
table. He wanted to pick blue
colored scissors and paper and then before we could begin, wanted to see the
instructions - in fact demanded to see them. For someone who was half of my height, this was a power
move. There weren’t any
instructions, so he proceeded to start cutting and I said that before we did
that, we needed to fold the paper.
“You do it then”, he said, now
clearly in charge. So I made some
cuts and a sorry looking snowflake like thing appeared. He now wanted to stick something on it
and asked me to get the glue from the cabinet, knowing where all the supplies
were kept. We went and took some
glue sticks, most of which were empty.
But he found some to put some on the snowflake and then he asked me to
tie a thread around it so that he could wear around his neck. It was so long so as to reach his
shoes, but he still wore it and walked about the room. It was time for us to leave and I
helped clean up and put everything back in the cabinet. The kids left, including my boy with the
contraption around his neck. For
an evening that had started slowly, it had certainly picked up. I had enjoyed my time with the kid and
I hope that he had with me…even though he preferred the monsters.
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