The school year is in full swing, and we're back to daily programming. Its hard to believe that the 6th graders I started with as a new volunteer are already in their technical year as 8th graders! The boys and girls are now split into two different classes. The boys are learning woodworking skills once a week, and the girls are doing sewing and craftwork. This is also a hard year for the girls... we started losing them last year already, but this is a big year that more start dropping out. While we try and retain them, as an organization, we are trying to embrace the inevitable - we can't hold on to them all. These older kids are still more than welcome at our program, and they get first dibs on our field trips and extra activities, but we're also trying to expand and work with the new students at the middle school!

These little guys are fifth graders, and absolutely adorable! Everything is so new and exciting now that they are finally middle schoolers, and they show up at the end of the day anxiously anticipating whatever activity we have for them that day. On Thursday, one of my colleagues came to do her weekly art activity. It was so cute to me that even though they were "just" coloring rice with water colors for next week's mosaics, each of them took such care in their work. :)