This year’s Read to Feed project in first grade took on a new twist when students collected cans of fruit instead of pasta to stock the soup kitchen pantry at Capitol Hill Community Services. Read to Feed is the grade’s service opportunity that also involves literacy and math lessons.

Students brought in one can for every 15 minutes of reading they completed at home, either alone or with an adult or older sibling. As the cans rolled in, they sorted them by type of fruit and groups of 10 before loading them into a van from Capitol Hill.

 

“The pantry still has boxes of pasta from last year’s readers, so the kitchen asked for canned peaches and pears instead,” explains teacher Lisa Schreiner. The soup kitchen uses the food to prepare meals for disadvantaged Denver residents. This is the same program our sixth graders participate in as part of their service learning; they travel to downtown Denver to serve lunchtime meals every Friday during the school year.

Drumroll, please ... first graders read 36,525 minutes and donated 2,435 cans of fruit this year. Incredible!

 
Another service learning project that first graders recently completed involved their Spanish lessons. They created unique coloring books for children at the Volunteers of America temporary housing for families. GO help!