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Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran was the last story in our theme on Imagination in reading this quarter and it was the best story I have ever heard for this theme.  When I was reading before the class started, I was fascinated with how the children in the story enjoyed their childhood life and played all day with their neighborhood friends in a village they created from stones, boxes, and desert glass.   Even after the children in the story had grown up and moved away, they still remembered the make-believe village they had created so long ago.  After reading the story, I remembered my childhood days with my brother, sister, and neighborhood friends.  We did not create a village like Roxaboxen, but we played in the mansanitas tree, rode our bicycles, and ran in our neighbor’s garden taking the fruit and vegetables.  I wish I could go back to where I grew up, full of enjoyment and excitement.

Every child has memories of his childhood days.   After we finished reading the story in class, I asked my Level B2 students to share experiences from their childhood days.  They all shared about their life at the shelter.  Similar to my experience, they have not had a Roxaboxen, but they are very happy and enjoy playing with their friends at CCHS. 

In order to experience this make-believe Roxaboxen a little bit more, we made our own small town on a board filled with beads for stones in between houses drawn on the board. 

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Clayd_2325d74acb7Everyone was so excited.  While we were making our own Roxaboxen, my students felt like they were in a real place.  They used their imagination to create a great Roxaboxen of their own.  Congrats kids!Clayd_3

Clayd_4701d1b3981Remember!  “Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.” So never stop imagining and dreaming.  God Bless!!!!

-Clayd Verzales, Level B Teacher

J-O-Y!

Mar. 13, 2013By: Lindsay Hoeft

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!

SRA Day!

Mar. 10, 2013By: Tammy Vosika

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.  

DSC01818The 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

Mar. 9, 2013By: Paul Healy

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

Mar. 8, 2013By: Bjork Ostrom

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.

The Littlest Waveboarder

Mar. 7, 2013By: Lindsay Ostrom

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!