Helping in Our Community

       Each year, +Classroom Champions have their Olympic Athlete Mentors create a video on the topic of Community.  This is one of my favourite topics of all.  The old adage "it takes a village to raise a child", is so true, especially in this day and age with technology and the ability to connect with others around the world.  In our global community, our youth need to learn the skills to work in this environment and as Scott Tupper says in his video found below, "we are part of multiple communities...their are multiple ways to play a positive role in your community."

Scott Tupper: Community from Classroom Champions on Vimeo.

       For the second year, the grade 2 Southoff, 4 Clarke-Rennie and my grade 8 Health students, we worked on making No-Sew Blankets that would be donated to the Linus Project Alberta and Victim Services in the Provost area.  These blankets will then be given to people who have recently gone through a traumatic experience.

       The process started with a wonderful shopping spree at one of my favourite kinds of stores; a fabric store.

After purchasing 28 pieces of fabric that were 1.5 yards  long (bolt width), we matched the front and backs together with the coordinating fabric.  We even had four ladies from our community come in and help us with the cutting and squaring off.









Next we layered the pieces and cut of any edges

that were not square.












Once the edges were square the grade 8 students were able to cut 4" squares out of each corner and then add 1" x 4" fringes along the side.  These fringes had to go through both layers at the same time to prevent the sizes of the fringes from being different when you tied each set of fringe together.  This is something we learned from our experience last year.

When we finally finished the cutting, we put the blankets away until it was time to tie the fringes together.

With grade 2S, 4CR and my Health students, we spent a couple of classes tying the blankets together.  This gave the grade 8 students the chance to be positive roll models for the younger students as they taught everyone how to tie the blankets.

To showcase our talets, I have created a Prezi of the finished product.  You may recognize the rhyming pattern as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.  The kids seemed to get a great kick out of watching seeing their task put to a rhyme....I think they felt quite pleased they had accomplished so much to help so many people, even if they would never meet the people who would receive these gifts.