Quilts from Robert Down Elementary second graders for bodies and souls

Second graders from Robert Down Elementary School in Pacific Grove delivered 10 quilts that they helped make to Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula today to comfort babies who spend time in the nursery.

The project by Denise Johnson’s class was part of a social studies lesson on caring and kindness. Elizabeth Olney, whose son Corbin is in the class, does sewing projects at the school each year and proposed making the quilts. She received a grant and fabric donations from the Monterey Peninsula Quilters Guild, which also regularly makes quilts for local hospitals. The class made 26 quilts and Olney added four more. They are being divided among Community Hospital and the two Salinas hospitals.
Olney cut the fabric and each child selected the two prints they wanted to use and pinned them together wrong-side-out. Olney sewed the edges with a machine, then the children turned them right-side-out and tied a series of square knots in a grid pattern that will hold the front and back together. Each quilt bears a label with the maker’s signature and a message that they were a gift from the class.
“They were so excited about being able to bring these to the hospital,” Olney says.
The project incorporated lessons in math, art, and social studies, Johnson says, and it also taught the children that in the right circumstances, it’s OK to do something kind for a stranger.

Members of the class, their parents, and their teacher delivered the quilts to Catherine Powers, RN, director of the Family Birth Center, and Zosia Chciuk, RN, assistant director of the intensive care nursery. While at the hospital, they fed the fish in the koi pond and visited the Family Birth
Center, posing for a photo with the Dennis the Menace statue at the entry. They also got to peer through a window in the nursery to see a newborn who will be given one of the quilts.
“These quilts symbolize the support our families receive from the community,” says Powers. “Wrapping a baby in one of these quilts is like the community wrapping its arms around the baby.”

-- Brenda Moore, marketing and communications, Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula

UCSC grad and Gabrielle Giffords staff member to be honored in the US Capitol

Gabriel Zimmerman, the first Congressional staff member to be murdered while in the line of duty, will have a placed named after him in the Capitol, the Gabriel Zimmerman Meeting Room.

Zimmerman was killed in the January 8 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, that took the lives of six people and injured thirteen others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

“The ‘Gabriel Zimmerman Meeting Room’ will honor the legacy of Gabriel Zimmerman and the thousands of congressional staffer that work in our communities across the country,” said Congressman Sam Farr, who co-authored the bipartisan resolution to honor Zimmerman. “By all accounts Gabe was a person dedicated to making a difference in the lives of the people around him, and now that spirit will be echoed by the people who visit this room and the staffer that use it everyday.”

Zimmerman graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2002, where a scholarship fund has also been established in his honor to celebrate his dedication to public service. The resolution to name the Gabriel Zimmerman Meeting Room was approved unanimously.

Here's a good project for middle and high schoolers

California middle and high school students can compete for $50,000 in prizes by creating a five-to-eight-minute video documentary for entry in the StudentCam, -- C-SPAN's Annual student documentary competition. This year's topic, “The Constitution and You.” The goal is to engage youth in the principles of our democracy to ensure its preservation.

Students are asked to select any provision of the U.S. Constitution and create a video illustrating why it is important to them. Videos must reflect varying points of view on the topic and also include C-SPAN video that supports the topic. Winners in both middle and high school categories receive cash prizes. Teachers listed as faculty advisers, can also win equipment for their schools. One California student videographer and a parent or guardian, will win a trip to Washington, D.C., including a VIP tour of the C-SPAN studios.

Entry forms and completed videos must be submitted online by January 20, 2012. For more information on the competition, please visit the C-SPAN StudentCam 2012 Web site.