Thus far, walking into the “non-peanut zone” classroom once a week has been a tremendous eye opener.  To see all the four-year-olds, with “bubbles” in their mouths, curiosity in their eyes, and energy beaming, I see potential.  The twenty two children in the class have potential to do so much in this world. Their location in low-income residential area should not determine their ability to make a change in the world, just like the corps members hope to do.

Considering how little of their life has been spent in school, I am amazed to see how much they already know and how much more they will learn in the next upcoming years.

My experience has been very fulfilling; I enjoy reading to them and discussing the topics of our JumpStart sessions.  During Center Time, my friends engage actively in their creative thinking and occasionally they will even mention a new vocabulary term from our books.  My favorite Center time with them has been dramatic play for “Peter’s Chair” because we pretended to paint cardboard furniture I made for their baby siblings.  In the book, a new older brother, Peter, is disappointed in his parents painting his old baby furniture pink for his baby sister, though later he discovers he enjoys this task and is happy to give something to his new sibling.  During this session, we painted in numerous colors and even made up our own colors, the kids made stripes, polka dots, and all kinds of designs on the chairs and tables we pretended to paint.  After they were happy with the furniture, though some kept going, some of my friends joined me in painting the walls of their siblings’ room.  As we pretended to paint, they would tell me about why they were helping and told me how they were just like Peter.

Watching them learn to sing our JumpStart songs and begin to understand how rhyming works is priceless, as they try to come up with rhymes themselves.  Soon enough they will be able to construct better sentences and answer questions fully.  The kids grin every time they can find matching letters and make me smile every time they have something interesting to share.  During the next semester I will work to better re-direct the children back to the reading and work on phrasing my questions better to improve their understanding of our session books.  I hope to create materials that keep my friends engaged and always interested.

-Ekaterina Vaslienko