Mrs. VT's Kindergarten Class

Kindergarten Project
S.O.S. - Share Our Shoes

When we heard from our Kindergarten Teacher, Mrs. Von Tersch, about her free photo safari trip to South Africa we were excited and couldn’t wait to see all her photos. But when we heard about the children she had met at a local village school, who had no shoes, we knew we wanted to learn more about these children.
To understand them more, we wanted to experience what it was like to walk outside without shoes, like the South African children. One day we took our shoes and socks off and walked outside on the cold ground. We were shocked and screamed at how cold it was. We only had walked for a few minutes, but we wanted to immediately put our shoes on. We couldn’t understand how the children of South Africa could walk outside shoeless every day without shoes. As a class, we came up with many ideas of what we could do to help them. After much discussion, we decided we wanted to give (recycle) our shoes to the children in South Africa. This way we would share our shoes with them. At that moment, our Share Our Shoes (S.O.S.) project was born.
Using the Project Based Learning (PBL) model, we planned and implemented a school-wide shoe drive and collected used shoes. We really enjoyed planning our project as we worked in groups practicing for future careers. Our kindergartners were artists and illustrators decorating boxes to hold all the shoes. Others were graphic designers as the created posters. Those who wrote about the facts about the projects became journalists and historians. Our students who enjoy math were accountants and double counted pairs of shoes that were donated. Some were videographers and used technology to document the group's actions and thoughts through videos and photographs. We even had public speakers who shared the information learned with other students at our school. Because these students enjoy speaking, they used persuasion to express the needs of the children in South Africa. All in all, it was great practicing our future careers, but it was more fun knowing we were collecting shoes for children who didn’t have any.
We are really happy that we have collected over 400 pairs of shoes. We are also so very lucky that we are able to have shoes to wear everyday. Please help these children by donating to our fund gofundme.com/sg8pw74c, and we can ship these shoes to the children in South Africa who need them the most. Also, please see our Facebook page for more information: http://bit.ly/MrsVTSOS.
Please contact our Teacher Mrs. Von Tersch svonters@musd.org if you have any further questions. She says she also needs help with advise on the best way to ship our shoes. She welcomes any help.
Thank you so very much!
Weller Kindergartners in Mrs. Von Tersch’s class