learning about homeless people

today was really great day. we learn how people who are homeless people have hard life but there are people who take there time to help as many as they can. being homeless is not easy so we should help...





Here are the beds for 22 women to sleep in each night.














And here we are making sandwiches for the homeless people to take with them in the morning for lunch later. We made 200 sandwiches total!

Harvesting Swiss Chard!

Franklin Library Garden

Today we went outside to water the garden, in the hot sun. We learned a lot about what are vegetables and what are not. People helped each other water the garden. We really worked together good as a group. People they say nice things about the garden. the end.

Community Trip to Mill City Museum

J.P. was one of the students from the library and he went to the Mill City Museum. We took this picture in the train and it was fun.

When we were in the elevator some people were scared because it was too tall. Nur and Vianna thought being up that high didn't feel good. The rest of us were busy looking out the window and seeing the view!

When we were up on the 7th floor the Mississippi River looked beautiful! We learned that the waterfall is smooth and it makes wheels turn and push the flour up to the 7th floor.

The Mill City Museum is fun and you will learn something about Mr. Washburn (think of Washburn high school! It was named after Mr. Washburn!) so you should visit the museum too.

First Community Trip of the Summer!

(Brianna looking innocent as always...)

(Bri and Vianna hanging out by the bikes)













(Lily, Killian and Khalid on a bike)
(Creepy horror movie guy standing in front of waterfall)


The Franklin Teen Center went to the minnehaha falls today & explored & rode bikes a little. I thought it was pretty fun(more fun than I thought it would be). Khalid said "I'm hungry, that's all". Obviously he worked up quite an appetite. Killian said "It was pretty fun". & I said "WOOOOOOOOOOOH! that was fun!"

Different Talents bring culture to the Teen Center

In the enclosed video, was the winning act, Michael Reed reading an original peom penned by him. The talent show had many other acts , which wow many individuals. The talents had many culture compiled together. The show brought many talents such as singing, acting, magic tricks, as well as public speaking skills. This event open young individuals to many cultures: American, Native American, and Somalian. Here is the list of performers who contributed to talent show.

1. Hassan- secret handshake
2.Fadumo- singing Happy Birthday song
3.Angela- texting and calling at the same time.
4.Michael Reed- reading an original peom.
5. J.P. -Dance.
6. Mo- mo - Improv
7.Somalian Student Association (Abdikadir Hassan, Abdiasis Diviye, Adan Ahmen, Abdiwali Salad)- Traditional Somalian Dance.


I would like to say thank you to all those young individuals who participated in making this talent show.

Tomaine and Leon help with garden.

Improv Performance

Here are the members of the Teen Center's first improv acting troupe: The Unknowns











This is 2 young teens named Bri and Jarvay they are improving a short scene Of a Artist and A person who wants a picture painted of her. this was just one of many scenes performed last Thursday May 20th in the teen center. we had an audience of 20 or 25 people watching us.

The best scene in the show, in Bri's opinion, was "The Robbery." In this scene there were TWO robbers in the same house, then they ran into each other, then when the home owner came back they had to hide. the scene got a lot of laughs from the audience.

Chicago Avenue Project

Last night we watched a play that kids did themselves. And there was a real actor with each kid, too. We took the city bus to the Pillsbury House Theater to see their program where local kids work with professional actors, directors, and playwrites to learn to act and produce a show in about three months. Here is a video about the project from the theater's website.

There were many short plays all put together, the one that Malik likes the most was the very last one. What he liked about it was that the kid was really really funny. Hillarious.

Khalid liked another one that featured a kid with glasses who was probably about 11 years old and he was energetic, active, he was a hero. He was honest and brave because he saved the museum from a bad guy and he was humorous the whole time.

The play Chala really liked was the first one, about a pair of soldiers fighting against a volcano. He liked it because it was funny.

Another day, another brain teaser!...

On a cool and crisp April afternoon, the gang of teenagers gather around to do an activity that really gets your noggin a flowing. The game is called the "hand-cuff" challenge. Easy, right? You get you and a partner to take a string,wrap it around the wrists like hand-cuffs, and overlap the string so they are linked. The object of the game is to unlink the cuffs without taking it off your wrist. Not so easy now is it? Its help team building, and it also helps with interaction. Getting teens to meet new people is one of the hardest things to do, next to finding a needle in a hay stack! (My apologies for being old fashioned, but you have to admit, it's so fun!). Anyways, the bottom line is, that this game is good for the youth because it lets them have fun and it lets them feel like they can enjoy themselves. I'm Mohamed Mohamed saying good night and Go Twins. And remember bloggers, LeBron James is a Monster. A total and complete Monster. Two fingers.

Acting Class with Anton

This is the class with Anton, and we are learning how to act. That's Anton with the red hat on, he is a really good actor and he's teaching us so many things like how to persuade other person to get what you want.
the program is every other Thursday from 6:00 to 7:30 until may 20th. we will have Performance at the end. the performance is for everybody to watch and everybody is welcome. People that join this program with Anton have a fun time to act like different people and have a specific person to act with. It is very fun and entertaining to act with Anton and the others.

Working on the Youth Farm (32nd St and Portland Ave)

today was the third day of youth farm programs, yesterday we experienced how to do different things about plants and seeds in the greenhouse (located at Cherokee Heights Elementary School in St. Paul). We saw a lot of different food like a tomato, basil, and others. Nur reflected, "I touched one thing (a plant) and then I could smell it on my hands, it smelled good."

Pictured here are some youth from the teen center shoveling for gardening and preparing for the spring.

Teen Center is building this week!

Today people from the Teen Center and from Youth Farm worked together to make garden beds. In the future, we'll have plants and vegetables growing in the beds near the side of the library.

Three teens who participated in the building said:

"The hardest thing about the project was the hammering. No, no, it was making it so there aren't gaps between the pieces of wood."

"The hardest thing was that people they didn't know how to make the hammer work."

"It was cool because we never do work together and for this we actually had to work together or it wouldn't work."

"Some people couldn't hammer it right and that was funny."

"For me the easy part was hitting the nail with the hammer and getting the two pieces of wood to stay together."

Spring Break!

We asked two teen leaders at Franklin, what's your favorite thing about spring break? Here are their answers...

"Nothing."

"Nothing, actually."

As you can see, our teens are very articulate. Tune in next week for more than one word responses :)