For my senior project I have been working at the at the Vincent A. Cianci Head Start Center, which is run by Children's Friend and Service, a nonprofit organization located in Providence. Once there we were split up into groups of two and three and worked in classrooms of 17-18 children, aged 3 to 5. We played with the children building with blocks, doing puzzles, playing house, doing art projects, etc. We also helped the teachers at lunch time making sure everyone was eating, and we also cleaned after each meal. These are children that are from low income households, so it is important that they eat two meals at school. I really liked that we were able to establish some meaningful relationships. We got to establish relationships with the children, teachers, and parents. We got to see what the teachers have to go through every day in the classroom. We had a visible effect on the lives of the children, as we found out because the director of the school told us that the parents have said the children have been talking about us a lot at home. The children liked having us there, as they would always ask us if we were coming back tomorrow and seemed excited when we came in every day. The teachers usually found it helpful to have some extra hands around because the children are sometimes hard to control, especially with only two teachers. This was very important especially on our trip to the zoo. It was so exciting to see how excited the children were about the zoo. Such simple things make these children’s faces light up.
During the afternoons on the second week we organized a drive around providence. We went to local businesses asking for book, toy, and toilet tree donations. We got about 60 tooth brushes, 200 tubes of tooth paste, toys, and hopefully some books to follow soon.
On our last day we gave each child a tooth brush, tooth paste, a pencil, and a treat. This was my favorite part because the children loved it, hugged us and did not want us to leave.
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