Staff Blog
Think of a wonderful thought
Any merry little thought
Think of Christmas, think of snow
Think of sleigh bells
Off you go like reindeer in the sky
You can fly! You can fly!
You can fly!
Think of the happiest things
It's the same as having wings
Take the path that moonbeams make
If the moon is still awake
You'll see him wink his eye
You can fly, you can fly!
You can fly!
Up you go with a heigh and ho
To the stars beyond the blue
There's a Never Land waiting for you
Where all your happy dreams come true
Every dream that you dream will come true
When there's a smile in your heart
There's no better time to start
Think of all the joy you'll find
When you leave the world behind
And bid your cares goodbye
You can fly, you can fly!
You can fly, you can fly!
You can fly!
I captured that picture above, and as I pushed the button of my camera, this song was running through my head. It is one of the songs from the Disney movie, Peter Pan. It is a classic, from pre-Pixar days. For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, it is about a boy from the magical land of Never Land. It is a story of fantasy, magic and imagination.
I remember watching that movie as a child and when that song came on, I felt excitement and joy---like anything was possible! Peter Pan was able to fly! With just a little bit of pixie dust after all.
As I watched that boy running across the yard with that plastic bag as if it were a parachute, or a plane or a spaceship, I felt like he felt the same thing. And I was so happy and grateful that he could feel that. Despite where he had come from before arriving at CSC, he was feeling like a kid, a carefree, fun-loving, free to imagine kid. He didn't have to worry about begging for food or tend to an ailing family member.
All too often our kids have had to grow up much sooner than they should have. And not to say that CSC is like Never Land, but it is not unheard of to see kids regress a little once they come. When they realize they are no longer responsible for the health and wellness of their siblings or for finding food for their family, they play more and sometimes as if they were younger.
Growing up is a process that can't be avoided; however, it's nice to know that being a kid isn't that far out of reach...
J-O-Y!
Loving life....and more specifically....hackysacks! :)
Thank you to our visitors for giving every kid their very own hackysack---as you can see, they were eagerly received!
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SRA Day!
Last Friday was SRA Day at school! SRA is our reading curriculum so it includes reading, writing, and spelling! We spent the morning having some fun reviewing things the kids had learned in SRA throughout the year. It started off with one student from each level sharing why they like SRA. Then we had a cheer competition. The children were divided into four groups and each group had 10 minutes to create their own cheer about SRA or reading. It was cool to see what they came up with!
After the cheering competition was the spelling contest! The kids took turns writing letters or words on the white board as a review of things they had learned. They also drew pictures that related to some of the themes our classes had studied. Some of the older kids went up and explained how their pictures related to the theme.
The final part of the program involved several presentations by our kids. The Level A students performed sang "The Alphabet Song". Jaime and Pretchy each did a beautiful job sharing poems about reading! Shiela & Rowena sang a duet of "America the Beautiful", a song they learned in one of their reading units. Then three of our Level C students shared stories they had written during class.
Here are some more pictures from our exciting day!
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Friends
Friendships are an important part of life at CSC. Although most of our children have siblings at CSC (about two thirds), they all seek out friends in their age group and enjoy hanging out, playing, making music and talking about life. Our kids can easily find friends who have similar backgrounds and can understand and accept what they have gone through in life. Some friendships can go on for several years, depending on how long the children stay at CSC. When a child leaves for adoption there are often sad friends left behind who wonder if they'll ever see them again. In some cases, friendships that began at CSC can pick up later on when children are placed in the same geographical area. Check out a few pictures of friends at CSC:
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Movie Night
One of the things we often hear at CSC is laughter, and one of the best places to hear it is during a movie night.
It's hard to organize a trip to the movie theater, so often times staff will gather up a group of kids and setup the projector in the library at the school. The movie night below was a "girl's night out" that Teacher Lindsay organized. However, being the IT guy, I was allowed to attend because I had to setup the screen and projector. :)
The movie was Mr. Popper's Penguins.
It's hard to see much in the video below, but it's really fun to listen to the laughter of the kids.
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The Littlest Waveboarder
Waveboarding is the cool thing to do during playtime here at CSC. Lots of the older kids got waveboards for Christmas, but recently more and more of the little kids want to try the waveboards as well. The other day I noticed this little lady trying out her older sister's waveboard in the driveway and I couldn't stop laughing - it was so cute! And she's so good at it!
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