{M3 Video: Kids acting out for literature »

WATERLOO - A quilt can be made of just about anything, as five Orange Elementary School first-graders discovered Friday.

The students heard a story about a young black girl whose parents made a patchwork quilt with "her clothes and stuff like that," said Allison Brasch.

"And her curtains," added Hailey Dierich.

Brandin Austin noted the quilt even included "her baby pajamas that didn't fit her."

The children were at Hawkeye Community College, where sophomore Stephani Claas had just read them "The Quilt" by Ann Jonas as part of the second annual African-American Read-In. Orange first-graders and second-graders from Lowell Elementary School participated in the black history month event.

The nearly 100 children broke into small groups to hear books by black authors or about black people read by Hawkeye students. Afterwards, the children completed a craft related to their story.

Claas' students decorated construction paper quilt squares, stitched together with yarn. Some glued on heart-shaped foam while others twisted pieces of pipe cleaner into letters.

"We're decorating it and I'm making letters for my family," said Austin, after gluing on a pink J for his brother Justin.

The children also assembled in the auditorium to watch videos of African stories and see local black author Joshalyn Hickey and illustrator Chaveevah Banks Ferguson unveil their newest book.

"The idea is to help promote multicultural literature and African-American literature, in particular, on this day," said HCC education instructor Catharine Freeman, one of the organizers of the event. She noted the event exposes the children to new perspectives.

At one point, the children became active participants in the literature they were hearing and learning about. They all gathered on the stage to do interpretive movement to the poem "Black is Beautiful" by Ann McGovern. As Hawkeye student Andrea Houston read the poem, children followed the lead of Lowell teacher Cassandra Hart, who acted out some of the words.

Hart said such "visualizing" is a familiar activity for her students.

"We do a lot of visualizing activities and drama's one of them," she said. "We enjoy doing that. …

"They can express what the author is saying," Hart added. "It really brings the book alive and really brings meaning to them."

Freeman said preparing for the day and being at the event had a lot of good applications for her children's literature students. They helped create lesson plans and learned how to be flexible when some last-minute changes occurred in the program.

The Hawkeye students also found some of the books they chose to read to the children were not readily available in area libraries.

"They had to do a little work to find the books they read today," said Freeman.

As a result, she and the students came up with a service learning project. They are assessing the selection of multicultural literature offered at area schools starting with Orange, HCC's Partner in Education.

Contact Andrew Wind at (319) 291-1507 or andrew.wind@wcfcourier.com.