On December 16 and 19th, Mrs. Park, the Cerritos High School Korean teacher, assigned the students to design a “small tolken of appreciation” for their parents.
On the first day, the teacher handed out red squares of Christmas-themed wrapping paper, envelope stencils, and scissors to her students in order to create a handmade envelope. Afterwards, she passed out small multicolored rectangle pieces of paper for the students to write a letter to express their gratitude to their parents in Korean. During the last half of the period, she brought out a pitcher, filled it with clear lye and placed it in the microwave until it melted down into a liquid. She then let the students choose what colors to mix into the liquid, and the 5th period class eventually ended up with three batches of pink, magenta, and light blue. The lye mix was then poured out into molds: the pink colored mix into heart molds, the blue colored mix for sea creatures, and the magenta mix for both of the molds. However, due to the fact that the molds had yet to harden, the class left the soap at school over the weekend to fully solidify.
On Monday the 19th, the teacher provided many small stickers to seal the handmade envelopes with the now completed Korean letter. Then, the class popped the soap out of its molds and wrapped them in festive tissue paper.
When asked why Mrs. Park decided to create this assignment, she replied, “I wanted students to give their parents some sort of appreciation from their hearts…both the students and parents are usually too busy to express their love, but with letters, one can give a tangible form of love and gratitude. Also, I added the idea of developing soap, because it is a useful household item.”
Mrs. Park’s wish came true as Cindy Shin, a Korean IV student, announced, “I found the whole activity exciting, especially because I never made soap before! Also, my mom was really happy when she recieved the gift, and she described the soap as pretty and cool.”
