Getting Started

Hi! I’m Maria Lewis, a freshman at American University and a Corps Member in Team Kindness for Jumpstart DC! I’m SUPER excited to start my first session and hope everything goes smoothly the first couple of weeks. I can’t wait to go to Appletree Institute Public Charter School with my team and meet everyone there! These kids are going to be so cute and so eager to learn, which I’m so pumped about! I have been constantly practicing reading our first core storybook, Oonga Boonga by Frieda Wishinsky, so I’ll have it down to a science for my first session. I’m making sure I include all of the vocabulary we need to teach the children and allow room for them to add their own input and ask questions. I really hope they understand the book after reading it for enjoyment and for reconstruction since it conveys a nice meaning of family.

This week since my team does not have observations we will be able to get a lot of materials done and get more time to work on our “J is for Jumpstart” books. We have been working so hard making our materials, and we are really proud about them! The theme for most of our materials is kids movies and is focused on certain characters. So far we have minions from Despicable Me, Nemo from Finding Nemo, Violet from The Incredibles, Mater from Cars, Sully and Mike from Monsters University, Heimlich from A Bug’s Life, Wall-e, and Russell from Up. We’re obsessed!! We’re even singing along to Disney songs while we work! We are all doing our part to make this year so enjoyable for the kids and for ourselves. We hope they get excited to see our materials and us. It’s going to be a fun couple of weeks, and a great year! I can’t wait to get started!!

~Maria Lewis
Team Kindess
Corps member