Beautiful Jackson
All summer long, Operation Shoestring’s Project Rise summer camp counselors have focused on literacy. From field trips connected to books to classroom activities bringing to life the words on the page, our kids have experienced reading in ways they’ve never done before.
In Carolyn Davis’s second grade class, they read Something Beautiful by Sharon Dennis Wyeth, a story about a young girl who, after searching around her city, finds beauty comes in different forms.
Stepping into the main character’s shoes, the class created a 3D model of Jackson. The beautiful Jackson they want to see surround them. They included neighborhoods, banks, schools and, of course, Operation Shoestring.
Carolyn said she wanted the kids to participate in this activity as a team-building exercise. “The children were inspired to use their imagination to create the Jackson they wanted to see. I wanted them to find the good in their city and show them they had the power to change their circumstances,” she continued.
Using imagination is pertinent essential to the cognitive development of children. As Dr. Scott Kaufman, author of Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, states in a psychologytoday.com article, “Systematic research has increasingly demonstrated a series of clear benefits of children’s engagement in pretend games…such as increases in language usage including subjunctives, future tenses, and adjectives.”
Those places your imagination can transport you are filled with wonder, excitement and can be the catalyst used to spark ideas that may one day become a reality. Even Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
We applaud Carolyn’s class for using their imagination to create the best representation of our city. And we should all do our part to help make their vision of our beautiful city a reality.