The teachers at our local elementary school do this very cool thing. (Well, MOST teachers at elementary schools do very cool things. It’s part of their job requirement). BUT.

Our third graders do a wax museum. They choose a person to research, read a biography, and sort through the most interesting personal facts. Then the children dress up as their person and stay frozen. Parents get to come through and press a button to make the wax figure start his or her brief speech. It is beyond adorable. These kids have worked so hard, you can see it in the posters, the costumes, and especially when they give their speeches.

Evie decided to be Madame Curie and we looked through the book together. Did you know that she won two Nobel prizes? One in chemistry and one in physics. Did you know that the second year (1911) she won the Nobel prize she was also turned down for membership to the French Academy of Sciences because she was a woman? Did you know that she and her daughter Irene took their x-ray machines, attached them to vehicles’ batteries,  and drove these mobile x-ray units to the front lines of World War I and saved countless lives?

My other daughter, Sylvia, decided to be Malala Yousafzai, the young woman from Pakistan who wrote a blog for BBC Urdu about what was happening in the Swat Valley. The young woman who was shot by the Taliban because she wanted to go to school. The young woman who cannot return home because of more death threats.

Click to hear her own words: Malala’s speech

Sylvia was so inspired by this wax museum project that she asked me if we could do a bake sale to raise money to send a girl to school. I wasn’t sure. I mean, I’ve baked cookies before, but how would this work? Who would buy the cookies? How would we package them for sale?

The girls and I decided to do it. We offered chocolate chip cookies, peppermint cookies, hash mark peanut butter cookies, and peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses in them. Our goal was to to raise $65, the approximate cost to sponsor a girl through http://www.malala.org.

We took pre-orders, enlisted my husband, baked all day Saturday, and Voila!

We’ve just about reached $100. I know it won’t change the world, but it’s the flapping of a butterfly’s wings moving from person to person. Both Madame Curie and Malala, women who fought so hard for what they believed in. The 3rd grade teachers in our elementary school. My daughters, willing to act on their feelings. And, hopefully, a young woman out there who will be able to attend school — knowing that strangers believed in her and her right to an education.

We wish you the best this holiday season! Take care of each other and let others take care of you!

Love,

Sherri