The Snowflake project: A Recap and Looking Forward to the New Year

Cutting snowflakes

So this past Saturday we joined with Lauren Maples of Bija Kids for "Snowflakes for Sandy Hook."  We spent the morning cutting our paper snowflakes to send to the Connecticut state PTA, which will use them to create a 'winter wonderland' for the kids of Sandy Hook Elementary School, who will be in a new school building after the holidays.  There were a couple of kids and few adults, and it was a pleasant, peaceful activity - actually, I really enjoyed sitting there cutting up colored paper and coffee filters, it was simultaneously meditative and comfortably social as well as we all focused on our scissors and paper and chatted.  Trying to figure out how to integrate paper-snowflake making into the rest of my life.

As a way of having kids connect to other kids somewhere else and express empathy I think it worked quite well, because younger kids understand what it means to try to make someone feel better with something you've made.  It also was an activity that adults and kids could do together, on equal footing,  which is the kind of project I'm trying to seek out.  A few weeks ago, we went to prepare food at the Masbia soup kitchen and that also had kids and adults working side by side in common purpose.

Some of our work product

The kids were not peeling carrots as fast as the adults but it didn't matter: they had something to contribute and it was valued.

Coming up, there will be another trip to Masbia in early February, in conjunction with Hannah Senesh Community Day School, and a project that I'm planning with the Brooklyn Public Library for January, which will ask kids to make bookmarks to go with new books that are being donated to kids in shelters.  I'm hoping to find a larger, on-going project that will allow families to engage over a period of time - although it seems counterintuitive, I suspect it may be easier to commit to working on a project if it's not a 'one-off' on something to which you have no personal connection.  We'll see.

It remains challenging to find volunteering and social action projects that people can do with their kids, and while I've been pleased with the response to this blog, I'm still challenged as to how to get more folks involved.  I will continue to post opportunities up here, and try to organize others, and chronicle my own efforts to make this real for my child.

Lauren and Esme at work at Bija

I continue to appreciate your links and suggestions, large and small.  I hope this new year will bring more activity to this project, and engage more people in the conversation.

Best for the New Year,

Nancy