Pajama Party Follows Donation Effort at Jaworek Elementary School

“It started with an e-mail from Scholastic books,” said third-grade teacher Claire Nicholson. According to the e-mail, Scholastic Reading Club was teaming up with the Pajama Program again this year to collect pajamas to distribute with books to children ages birth through 17 to help make the winter a little warmer. The Pajama Project coordinates the PJ donations, and Scholastic donates a book for every pajama donated. Classes were invited to participate in the project, and Jaworek’s third-graders took the invitation to heart.

“The whole school participates in the food pantry project, which is great,” said Nicholson. “But this project is just the third grade, and the students feel a stronger ownership in it.”

The students and staff donated a whopping 122 pajama sets in just three weeks. Nicholson said she recently learned that the donations will be used locally, in the metro west area, which adds to the pride and ownership everyone has in the project.

The teachers have taken the project an academic step farther: They created a math activity about it. A bulletin board in the third-grade hallway sports a graph in which each pajama cut-out equals a certain number of pajamas donated. Students had to analyze the board and complete a worksheet about the pictograph as part of their math graphing unit.

On Dec. 10, the last day of the project, the Jaworek students had a real pajama party to celebrate. Third-grade students and teachers spent the school day in their winter jammies, a visual reminder of how a group of people can make a difference.

Third-grader Lucas Patterson said the project dovetails well with his scouting ethic.

“To me, it’s part of the Scout law, to do my best to help other people, to help somebody in such a simple way,” he said.

To learn more about The Great Bedtime Story Pajama Drive, visit http://www.scholastic.com/pajamadrive.