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Well, I had absolutely nothing to worry about! Mrs. Clark’s 1st grade class was a wonderful, intelligent, and receptive audience to my talk about how my book, When I Met You, came to be. Not only did they ask great questions and listened in all the right spots, they gave super, constructive feedback which will help me with future presentations. I had a great time!
What I was worried about: I’d have to talk a lot about what adoption actually was and why kids got adopted and why they couldn’t stay with their 1st family. With this group, this didn’t come up at all. Everyone understood adoption and no one asked questions that made me uncomfortable to answer. (Not that I’m sure what those kinds of questions would be – maybe something like why did Little J’s parents get rid of him? Or, why didn’t you just make another baby in your tummy?)
The feedback I got was that they wanted to know more about life in Russia, and more about life in an orphanage. I had one little bit about orphanage life, and this was most interesting to them. I actually think at first I made it sound kind of fun (it’s like school, except you’re there all the time) but then I added stuff like no mom or dad, not many toys, no playground, etc. The detail that got the most gasps was that kids in the orphanage ate kasha (which I explained was like oatmeal) for breakfast. One child even gagged!
They were interested in the trip (which I didn’t mention at all) and wanted to know about the train ride. They were excited to learn Russian words and they loved the coloring page. I had fun, and I’m going to another 1st grade class in a couple of weeks. I’d like to do older kids, too, but I’ll have to think about how to structure the talk differently. I think the focus at that level should be Russia, as opposed to the book…
Yes, the children would probably like to know more about Russia, especially if they are older.
This country is as big as America and Canada and surely as important to the world. There are so many interesting things you can tell them. Maybe tell more about life inside and outside the orphanage, and what Russian families are like.
And Russian history and literature is so great. They have some of the childrens’ book writers who are really classic.
Russian food is really interesting. Kasha must be nutritious, but if you ate it all day every day it would get boring.
Maybe have a pre-test quiz to see what the kids already know and what they would like to know? Maybe the teachers could do that? And then you can structure their learning experiences accordingly – and have a feedback thing in print for the future.