Day 3 in Philly

Today was the real start of our mission trip. We arrived at the shelter to be given an entire presentation on the history of the shelter. Mr. Harrison broke our stereotypes of homeless shelters from just being single mothers with young kids to a mix of single men and teenagers. From this we traveled through the tiny halls to the preschool area. All of the kids were eating their snack when we proceeded to meet all of them. They were quite the bunch. Every kid was either excited and maybe a little intimidated to see us but most of them greeted us with the regular, "My name is　ˍˍˍˍ, what is yours?” and finished the conversation with “nice to meet you.” Then we started to make masks with the kids. Sabrina, who is in charge of the preschool, thanked us later for doing crafts since they do not have the numbers in staff to support those types of activities. Once those masks were finished with the preschool touch, we proceeded to move onto song and dance while they dried. Kyle, Sam, and I started with some animal sounds once we had gotten them into a circle of chairs. We roared like a lion and meowed like a cat, pleasing the kids greatly. After we all joined in the familiar song of 'Old McDonald had a Farm' then taught them the girl scout's very own 'The Little Duck Song' and finished with 'The Wheels on the Bus.' They had been sitting too long and we were hurting from the miniature chairs, so we got the masks and had a parade on their playground. Every kid was joyed to run around and show of their mask. After the long haul around the playground, we got to have free time on it and play with the kids. We all felt like little kids again. Some of us set up a line for the slide but ending up in a bit of a cutting problem. Some of us were trolls under the bridge. Some of us were wanted to just walk around with them holding their hands. And some of us were given the pleasure to push people around on bikes. The black mats that make up the floor of the playground escalated the all ready hot day, making me at least sweat. Also since the bridge was tall enough for the kids to bike through, we got to run after them crawling under it. After a long fun filled free time, we had to go inside to wait for their parents to pick them up. Thus ending our first enjoyable day of preschoolers.

Signed by
Joel W