It is hard to believe that our second year of our Reading Buddies project has come and gone. To make it memorable, we changed things up a bit and invited in special guest helper Chris Keadle. Chris is a retired social worker who founded Kickstart Cooking for Kids, an after school cooking program in Waukesha. Instead of creating an art project to donate to a local senior center as we typically do, Chris helped the kids learn two recipes they can easily make at home. In between making granola bars and parfaits, the buddies took out some time to read with each other. Thanks to a grant from Christ Church Episcopal in Whitefish Bay we were able to send home the students with the ingredients to recreate the recipes and also a kid-friendly cookbook for more culinary adventures.
We are so very grateful to the staff and students of Thurston Woods Elementary school. In addition to being wonderful hosts, the fifth grade students are perfect mentors for our young children: Modeling maturity, patience, and excellent reading skills. These students are so caring that they've decided to embark on one more project with TOAM this year. We are working with them to finalize the details but we're hoping to go off-site for an after school May service project. Our older TOAM kids will be able to participate alongside them. Stay tuned!