All About Me

Tonight’s read-aloud at the homeless shelter was “All About Me.” These are children who are often searching for their own self-worth.

For starters we made permanent name tags. They like anything that involves stickers. They could write their names or use glittery sticker letters. You can imagine what most of them chose to do. They loved the idea of hanging a badge around their neck.


A 4-year-old little girl explained to me that she was covering her nametag in glittery stickers so people would think she was pretty. I reminded her that she was beautiful even without her glitzy nametag.

The favorite book of the evening was “I Love My Hair.” It talked about the many different ways a young girl could wear her hair. We then talked about the ways boys could wear their hair, too. The reader was a new 17-year-old African-American volunteer, who could provide her own personal experience in hair-styling.


The children were exceptionally attentive so we read lots of books, with titles like “It’s OK to Be Different” and “Incredible Me.”

For an activity, each child filled out a personal information sheet. They loved jumping on my neighbor’s scale to be weighed and standing in front of the tape measure on the back of the door to determine their height. Then they did a self-portrait to complete their personal data.

They selected a give-away book to take “home” and we put a special name plate in each book so they would know who it belonged to. The name plates seemed as important as the books themselves.

Each child took away a tape measure so they could continue to measure their height. When you are 7, a few inches of growth mean a lot!