Small Things Matter and Difference Makers are joining forces once again to help the homeless in our community. Please join us in making fleece scarves for the homeless at Takoma Park Middle School on October 24 & 25 from 5-7pm. SSL hours available to middle school and high school. If you’re interested please drop us a line at thesmallthingsmatter.org or sign up at Montgomery County Volunteer Center. Small Things Matter thanks MCVC for their generous grant which helped offset most of the cost for this event.

Small Things Matter is partnering for a second year with Difference Makers Kokua Foods Program to share our literacy program Books for Bedtime at Takoma Park MS and Rolling Terrace ES on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of each month, respectively. STM will host a snack table where our members will read books to the younger children and will give out brand new books to help them develop a love of reading. We welcome donations of brand new books or small monetary donations for our literacy program via our website at http://www.smallthingsmatter.org. All donations are tax-deductible. Thanks! 🙂

STM members Lana, Amelia, and Serenity ran our Books for Bedtime Program during the Takoma Park Elementary School PTA meeting on October 2, 2018. The children listened to a Dr. Seuss story read by Amelia and then were asked to create a fantastical creature of their own and write a few words/sentences about it. STM went around offering help and encouragement when needed. The children did a great job of making wonderful stories about their creatures. What imaginations! A few of the older children worked on kindness rocks to abandon as a Random Acts of Kindness. STM will be back every other month to share our program at TPES. Our thanks to Lia Salza and Meg McDonald for the kind introduction to the TPES families. We can’t wait to see everyone again in December!

Small Things Matter had a wonderful time giving out free books to our friends at Rolling Terrace Elementary School on September 24, 2018. Seeing all those eyes light up when they saw the books made our day! This was our first school-wide distribution of new books that was made possibly by you, our generous donors and partners. Our thanks to all the wonderful teachers and staff at RTES, especially Michelle Esema, Mary Araghi, and Mary Carter for all their help with our visit. We had a delightful time meeting everyone and we enjoyed reading to your Head Start class! STM would also like to thank our friend and partner Steve Whitney/HOOPOE BOOKS, Share Literacy, Books for Afghanistan, Books for Pakistan for their generous donation of the “Man and the Fox” books for all the 1st graders and the bilingual Spanish/English “Fatima the Spinner and the Tent” for all the 2nd and 3rd graders. Steve spent the day with sharing reflections on the importance of reading and words of encouragement to the children and also read the “Man and the Fox” to one of the 1st grade classes. We would also like to thank Aimee Oberndorfer Le and Rona Sue London/The Ivy Bookshop for all the wonderful books they provided for the preK, K, 4th, and 5th grade classes. We are also thankful for all of you who have made financial contributions and supported our lemonade stands which allowed us to purchase additional books needed for this distribution. And lastly we would like to thank everyone who made and colored bookmarks for this event with a special shout out to the Difference Makers Teen Ambassadors who made some AMAZING fabric paper bookmarks for us. Thank you friends! We couldn’t have done it without you!

Woohoo! We had a fantastic time crafting monster stuffies at KID Museum #kidfest on September 23, 2018. In spite of the rain tons of people came out to enjoy all the wonderful exhibits, talks, and hands on activities. Thanks everyone for coming out to craft stuffies for Children’s National Medical Center and Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Special thanks to our amazing STM members and to Difference Makers for their wonderful support and help!

STM filled an order for one inch buttons on September 19, 2018. We hope the students at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School enjoy them.
Button sales are one of the many ways that STM raises funds for our projects. We design custom button too so keep us in mind for your next event. No order is too small and 100% satisfaction is guaranteed.

Small Things Matter joined Difference Makers at their community table at the Takoma Park Folk Festival (TPFF) on September 16, 2018 at TPMS. STM had a great time, met lots of wonderful people, and enjoyed great music, crafts, entertainment, and community groups! Our thanks to Doris Duarte/ Community CHEER Lunch & Learn Summer Camp for coming by to give us a Certificate of Appreciation for our summer work and to Bryan Goehring & Difference Makers for their support and for sharing their booth with us!

The Difference Makers Teen Ambassadors made some fun and amazing fabric paper for STM. We learned about fabric paper from my good friend Tisha in Canada and thought it would be fun to make this with the Ambassadors as part of their August Day of Service. Our fabric paper is made with relatively inexpensive items (muslin, glue, paint, paper bits -newspaper, colored tissue, and Chinese joss paper). Once the sheets were dry they were cut into these lovely little bookmarks. STM can’t wait to share these with the kids at Rolling Terrace ES at our first school-wide distribution of new books on September 24!!! Our thanks to the AMAZING DM Teen Ambassadors!

STM had an amazing day on August 8, 2018 at Let’s Play America‘s 10th Annual Play Day at Takoma Park Middle School. There were tons of fun games, face painting, karate demos and participation, dress up, Simon Says with Congressman Jamie Raskin, Comics Jam with Dave Burbank, Marsha and the Positrons, snacks from TPSS Co-op, and more! Our sincere thanks to the wonderful Play Lady Pat Rumbaugh for the kind invite to share our mission with others, her wonderful volunteers (special shout out to Michelle), our friends the amazing Difference Makers, and to all the wonderful children and families that came by to say hi. We were thrilled to share over 100 books with all the enthusiastic readers and were grateful to the little artists who took the time to craft a bookmark with us! Take care and we hope to see you soon!