Cramblit's Creative Concepts

After arriving at Monroe I put my backpack down and walk to the cafeteria for my group placement and today I picked to be with the 4th graders. Once the students finished eating their snacks the leader and I led the them to the arts and crafts room so they could work on their project for the day. The project that they were working on was a dinosaur replica with bones sticking out of it and eventually they were going to put fur over the bones and the body so it would look more like a dinosaur. Half way through the day Josh asked me if I would be willing to conduct an end of the year survey with a few of the students to see what they thought about the ACES program. So after the project making session was over I went out into the hallway and had one student come out and talk with me about their experience with ACES one on one. I thought that this went really well and it was interesting hearing the students answers to some of the questions especially the ones concerning their futures. After the question sessions it was free time and I took a couple of the students to the computer lab to play games and do quick math and typing. I thought I would try one of the games that the students play sometimes just to see how it was and it was actually harder than I thought it would be and it was pretty fun too. Unfortunately free time came to a close and along with so did another day at Monroe Elementary School.

Posted by cramb005 at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yet another arrival around 3:25 just in time for snack time and today I signed up to work with the 5th grade group and we went down into the room across the open area from the computer lab. Today the students worked on figuring out how much nutrition there is in what they eat during snack time and this went pretty well. After the nutrition we moved onto an activity in which the students used step counters to count their steps so they could figure out how much calories they would burn in two minutes of walking. Then we went outside to see what would use more energy walking or running by having having half of the students run and the other walk. After the study time the kids were allowed to go outside today for free time which was really nice since it was the best day so far of spring. It was fun to see the kids outside having fun running around in the jungle gym equipment and enjoying the outdoors. After a refreshing change by going outside for free time the day came to a close with another experience fullfilling volunteering day.

Posted by cramb005 at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This service learning day was my most favorite day so far this semester. The kids were in good spirit and the group that I was helping with did a fun activity for the day. We watched the movie, "An Inconvient Truth" and I always like learning about that kind of information. Even more interesting was how much the kids liked the movie and actually understood the issues brought up in the movie which made me feel pretty good since they are going to be part of the needed movement in the future. We weren't able to finish the movie but we watched a good part of it up until free time was upon us. So today we went to the big gym and the kids played all sorts of games today like basketball, soccer, and a couple of the students were playing catch with a baseball. Today went very smoothly and like I said before was a great day for volunteering.

Posted by cramb005 at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I volunteered to work with Matt's group and we were in the conference room near the main entrance in Monroe. The students who had homework I helped them figure out the problems they weren't quite sure on. Most of the students had math homework so this day went pretty well because it was pretty straight forward and was pretty easy to explain. After the homework the kids started to work on their presentation of alternative energy resources and once they were finished with reading over the material they gave their presentations on their certain energy type. For today I brought a few of the students down to the computer lab for typing and quick math games. This was pretty cool to see the types of games they have for kids to play these days for those types of learning games. Once the time came for the students to go home, that marked the end of another good volunteering session.

Posted by cramb005 at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My trip to Monroe Elementary school was lets just say interesting. The first two buses are just they always have been but when I got on the thirdy bus it turned left 5 blocks before the turn to the school and then it turned left away from the school again so I decided just to get off and walk the rest of the way. Because of my bus incident I was late and I missed the snack time so I went right to working with Matt's group this day. The students were working on nouns, verbs, and adverbs, to be honest I tried my best to help them out but that kind of homework was never my strength but I think we did pretty well. After the homework the kids wrote thank you letters to a newspaper columnists that visit that Monday. Once they were finished with the letters we moved into free time. The kids got to play lightning and play other basketball games today. Besides my bus mistake this day went over just fine.

Posted by cramb005 at 4:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I arrive a few minutes before 3:30 pm and today I volunteered to hand out snacks to the kids. After the kids were done with snack time the group I was with went up to the library to work on homework and to read. Most of the students on this day had a homework assignment that dealt with fraction so I was helping them out with that for most of the study time. The kids were very cooperative today so the homework went really well. After homework the leader went into a nutrition lesson about food and eating the right kind of foods. The kids discussed what they eat for each of the food groups and the leader informed them on the healthy foods to eat from each group. After the nutrition lesson it was time for free time. Today I went with a few kids to arts and craft. We worked on a huge painting of a dolphin but we weren't able to finish because their rides came before we could finish. Once the kids left I helped the leader clean up and then I went home, this was probably the best day that I had so far in my volunteering.

Posted by cramb005 at 4:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

3:24 on the dot I arrived at Monroe and walked into the lunch room to receive my assignment for the day. Today I was given a new assignment for the day and that was to work with the 5th grade group I think it was. But anyway after snack time when moved into study time down in a room across the hall from the lunch room. A couple of the kids actually had homework to do and the others didn't. So the ones that didn't have homework were either suppose to write in their journals or play a card game dealing with addition and subtraction. After the couple students finished their homework the kids moved into arts and craft time by making game pieces for their board games that they were making. After that was done the leader put in a movie about space, the movie was pretty much about how it's completely different without gravity and I thought it was pretty interesting actually.

Once the movie was over it was time for free time but only one of the students was able to go because the rest weren't being very cooperative during study time. Three of them had to stay in the room for five minutes while the other one had to stay for 15 minutes because he was being very disrespectful and uncooperative. So I volunteered to keep an eye on them while they had to wait out their time before they could go to the gym for free time. After the 15 minutes I brought the kids up to the gym and they played ships across the ocean and basketball for the shot time until the buses came. Today was probably one of the more stressful days because the students didn't want to do what the leader was asking of us and I didn't know how to control the situation but I suppose those days will happen with elementary kids. Looking foward to next week and hopefully that day will go more smoothly than today.

Posted by cramb005 at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just another day of arriving at the Monroe school around 3:20. I walked into the cafeteria and received my assignment for the day and I was assigned to work with the 4th graders again. After their snacks we went up to the library and started study time. On this day I helped the kids with their homework and helped them find some good books to read during the study time. This study time went pretty smoothly compared to other days so that was nice.

After the study time we moved onto the fitness and nutrition part of the lesson. The students just had to read out of their packets and they discussed the material with the leader. After the Fitness and Nutrition the students played silent ball unitl free. Today the kids had three choices for free time they could either go to the gym, go to the art room or go do typing. Most of the guys went to the gym and the other volunteer Tommy went with them. I went with the group that wanted to do arts. Arts was interesting to see what the kids were making and the quality of work. After awhile the buses came and sounded the end to another day of volunteering at ACES.

Posted by cramb005 at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yet again I arrived to Monroe around 3:20 pm in time to receive my assignment for the day and this day I was assigned to work with the 4th grade group. No problems during snack time this time around, so we moved into study time and this day we were up in the library. This group was a little bigger than the 3rd grade group that I worked with the previous week so this was a little more difficult but still manageable. I helped out a couple of kids with their math homework and tried to keep the students reading. The only problems that went on during this time were: the students weren't reading and talking too much and we had one student that refused to work on homework and became angry with us and didn't want to cooperate.

After the study time we moved onto the Fitness and Nutrition part of the lesson and this went a lot better. The students just had to read out of their packets and they discussed the material with the leader. After the Fitness and Nutrition the students played silent ball unitl free time in the gym. Once we got into the gym Josh started up a game of kickball. This time I was able to participate in the game and all of the leaders and volunteers were out in the field as the students were playing offense. After a few games of kickball the buses arrived and the day was over. The only problems of the day were during the study session where some of the students weren't reading but all in all it was a good day again.

Posted by cramb005 at 3:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well the bus trip went smoothly I guess and I arrived to Monroe around 3:20 pm. I didn't know exactly where I was suppose to go because this was my first day but I asked a woman at the front desk where the ACES office was and she directed me to a hallway where the office was. Josh gave me a tour of the building or at least of what I needed to know of and he explained to me how things worked at the school and what I would be doing exactly while volunteering there.

I started off by handing out snacks to the kids and after that I was assigned to help out with a 3rd grade group. They were pretty hyper so it took us awhile to actually get out of the lunch room but I expected this sort of thing to happen with elementary kids. After, we got done with snack time we went into a study room by the main entrance and the kids worked on their homework and if they didn't have homework they were allowed to play card games. I helped out by playing a dice game with one of the children, it was dealing with fractions. I also played card games with the kids too. I also would walk with the kids in the hallway because their not suppose to be by themselves in the hallways.

After study time we went to the small gym for free time and the kids played basketball until the rest of the after-school program came into the gym for some ships across the ocean. I basically just supervised during all of this. All is all my first day went pretty well, it went as well as I thought it would so I was a good day of volunteering.

Posted by cramb005 at 2:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)