Read–With-Me At HGS

Location: House Of The Good Shepherd

Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2014; 6:20-7:45 pm

Wilson was leading tonight and like the good old days, I received a long welcome email the previous night.  I have said it before and I will say it again: There is no other leader in Chicago Cares more committed than Wilson.  I arrived at HGS to find that several volunteers were already waiting though there was no sign of Wilson.  He was in fact the last to arrive.  We started going down to the reading room and I was in the lead with other volunteers following me.  And of course, I led them down the wrong path.  Some things don’t change.  While we waited, I learned that almost everyone had been here before, making my getting lost more embarrassing.  It serves me right for trying to show off my HGS pedigree!

The kids came in and the one with whom I usually work with went and grabbed someone else.  But there was another who came and took my hand.  This heartwarming way through which most of the kids over here greet volunteers is one of the reasons that I like coming here.  Wilson asked us all to stand in a circle for an ice breaker and today's’ topic was “Favorite junk food”.  He said that we should go around the circle and introduce ourselves and my kid took that literally, and went to each person in the circle and told them his name.  This led to everyone doing the same.  In terms of the junk food, there was a distinct sweet theme with ice cream and chocolates like ‘Reese’s’ and ‘M&M’s’ being mentioned.  I said, “Chocolate desserts”.  Wilson mentioned some chocolate covered funnel cake that he had found in the south side.  Definitely need to check that out!

I was engrossed in this one

I asked my kid to pick a book and he did so without really looking.  He was in a mood for playing with another kid and they were having a good natured fight, meaning Wilson had to separate them when the other boy asked to join us.  My kid said that he was his best friend.  We sat on the couch and had a collection of 16 books for early readers which were too junior for him.  Another kid came and asked if he could share the books and my kid said sure.  The other one then selected the ones he wanted and left the rest of us.  My kid didn't care that much.  We then breezed through the books, each being only 8 pages.  He had a habit of starting in the middle and I was insisting that he start from the begining.  After repeating that time and again, at one stage when he opened to page 4 by mistake and I had repeated myself, he finally said “yes, yes I know”.  The kid with whom I had worked last time while lying on the rug, was doing the same with his volunteer today.  My kid and I next started with a book called, “Don’t’ be my Valentine”.  It appeared to be an interesting story, though it was 60 pages long and at one stage my kid started getting tired.  I started reading alternate pages but he was now bored, but I wanted to see how it ended and so I did!

We had some time before our activity and my kid was now lazing saying that he was falling asleep.  He said that he wanted to tear up the books that he hated and asked me to join him.  I said that I’d make him a deal.  First he should read all the books that were over there and then select the 10 that he hated and if he was able to do that, I would join him in his destructive endeavor.  But we would not do anything till he had read all of them.  Before he could argue too much, Wilson announced the game for the evening.  Initially we had planned to go outside, but because of the rain, we were forced to stay indoors.  The idea of the game was to pick a letter from a deck of cards – vowels and consonants – and run across an obstacle course comprising of glue bottles to write a word using that letter on a board.  The person then had to run back and tag a teammate who would do the same.   Each time someone hit an obstacle, they would have to re-start the process with a new card. 

The words: Can you say dinosaur?

We split into two teams and I was with my kid, his best friend and another girl.  The second team was with all kids, meaning I was the only adult playing.  We started well, and since we had slightly older kids in our team, were ahead quite easily.  The boys were making a theater of running through the course, but did not really touch any of the obstacles.  Whenever my turn came, I would show them the letter and ask for recommendations, encouraging them to give me longer words.  For example, for “X” they said “X-ray”, but I chose “Xylophone”.  I was also getting a lot of animals, though I did mess up the spelling for "Dinosaur"! 

Our time was up and all of the kids had loved this spelling activity.  It was time to check the words and Wilson gave the other team extra credit for words like “Yo-yo”.  Maybe I should have kept “X-ray”.  Plus he threw out my misspelt “Dinosaur”.  Though our team had more words, we said that it was even and so everyone got a prize – “Oreo Birthday Cookies”.  The kids left and we helped clean-up.  I told Wilson this game had a great idea and we should make it more interesting by having each round be for different categories like color, animals etc.  He said that he would do a similar game for the drama project next week, something for which my kid had invited me.  Maybe someday I will.  For now, I left after another fantastic evening.