GloryToo Doing Reading Dog at Holy Name School
8 Years 11 Months Old
5/26/22

I decided that I’d better make more trading cards for GloryToo and Lovely.  I originally made 18 for each of them – and I gave out GloryToo’s card #14 at the last Reading Dog session for this year at Holy Name School.  That’s after just beginning Reading Dog there in January.  I’m already scheduled to start Reading Dog again right after Labor Day, so I’ll need a lot more GloryToo cards to get through the entire year.  At Tongue River Elementary I use 3 therapy dogs, so between them I have plenty of trading cards for a year, but I take only GloryToo to Holy Name.

I had a brainstorm and emailed the kindergarten teacher at Holy Name School, telling her I was going to make more trading cards for GloryToo and asking if she would like me to take photos of the kindergarten kids and use some of those in the new trading card series.  She was excited, so Thursday I took my camera to our Reading Dog session.  All but one of the 8 kids wanted photos with GloryToo – even one girl who is scared of dogs and never wants close to GloryToo – so I took those and also some group shots.  We normally do our Reading Dog sessions just outside the classroom, in the cloakroom, but it’s very small and the light isn’t good, so we took these photos in the classroom.

I don’t know exactly what Emily said to the kids about the project, but as I showed them the photos on my camera, several said, “I want that photo on my trading card.”  I had thought of using perhaps a total of 3 shots of the kids in the series of 18 new trading cards for GloryToo, but suddenly I had a trading card project just for the kindergarten class.  Nine cards will fit on a big sheet of card stock, so we can do a card for each child plus 2 group photos. 

I worked hard Thursday night and early Friday morning and got all the photos edited.  I burned them onto a CD and made a special trip to town Friday morning to drop it off at the classroom.  I asked Emily to have each child pick which photo they wanted on their card.  Before school got out, she texted me their choices and their choice of a group photo.  That made 8, so I get to choose one to be the 9^th.  The Holy Name School cards weren’t be done before school is out, so I mailed each of the kindergarteners and the teacher a set of the cards.  I sure wish I could have seen their faces when they got them. 

I will also print enough trading cards so the nursing home residents and one shut-in can receive them in the weekly letters I write to them.  I started writing weekly letters to the ones feeling most isolated during the pandemic shutdown and am continuing because the residents requested me to.  The activity directors often comment on the huge smiles that greet them when they deliver my letters.  

I’ll still do the additional series of 18 trading cards for both GloryToo and Lovely that I can use with the Tongue River Elementary kids.  I doubt I’ll use any of the Holy Name School photos in GloryToo’s new set of 18 cards, in case the TRE kids would think we should do a series with a card for each of them! 

I’m already wondering how this year’s Holy Name School Reading Dog kids, who will be in first grade next year, will handle the new kindergarten class doing Reading Dog instead of them.  Will we have to stay an additional hour so those kids can also read to GloryToo???

Since people steal photos off websites, these have “sample” on them to protect the copyright.  You should be able to enjoy them anyway.  The first photo is the card back.