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I have a paper snowflake under the plastic blotter on my desk.  It doesn't mean anything to anyone else except me and one other person.  That other person made the snowflake and many others for me just for fun.  I keep the snowflake there as a reminder.  A reminder of a special young lady who is thoughtful (hence, the snowflake), sensitive, eager, positive, hard-working, and loving.  She is also a bit shy and unsure of herself.  She needs reassurance at times.  And she's twin and so am I, so she is cool because twins are cool.  The snowflake is also a reminder of God's power and hope. 

snowflakebb9563954fThis young lady came to the shelter a number of years ago scared, broken and naive.  She needed a lot of love.  During her years at CSC, she felt more safe and loved.  She soaked up learning at school even though some things were very difficult.  She learned English faster than most other children who live at the shelter.  And she gradually became more confident in herself, eventually being able to get up in front of her peers and teachers to sing and perform.  We thought it was nothing short of miraculous. 

This lovely young lady left the shelter with her new, loving family awhile ago.  I hadn't seen her since until last night at the annual banquet.  We talked for a few minutes before the banquet started.  Then during a light-hearted part of the program when some of the adopted kids got up and did a little dance routine to a song, there she was dancing along with her siblings and the other kids.  In front of 650+ people!  Of course, nobody noticed anything unusual about that girl at the end of the line.  But, I knew.  Here was that scared, little girl transformed into a beautiful, blossoming young woman in front of a crowd of many people.  Now, that was even more miraculous.  God's hand at work among us. 

 

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!