Will work for...an extra hand

Fortunately I was able to visit the Boys & Girls Club twice this week.  On Monday, I spent the entire two and a half hours that I was there helping the kids with homework.  The first hour during Power Hour was good because I was helping multiple kids but then the last hour or so was rough.  It was rough because I was helping one kid the whole time and he didn’t want to do his homework even though he had a lot of it.  Thursday was much more interesting.  I was only able to be there for Power Hour.  I was the only one there for the first thirty to forty-five minutes and it was crazy.  There were fifteen kids all screaming for me to help them and I couldn’t get to all them at one time so it got pretty chaotic.  Things got even crazier after the two girls and boy next to me started competing for my undivided attention.  One of the girls decided she wanted me to be her sister so she started calling me “sister” then naturally the other girl had to do the same thing.  One of the other volunteers came over to sit with us and one of the girls pronounced that we would make a beautiful couple.  It was funny and laughable until I looked up to see his girlfriend standing two feet away looking at us, awkward.  He took the two girls to the gym after that.  Power Hour ended a little bit early so I got to do Triple Play for a little while.  Today’s game was pop tart tag, which was quite interesting considering I had two girls pulling me in two different directions.  When I had to leave at 4 I had to pry the girls off because they didn’t want me to leave.  My crazy day ended appropriately with me getting hit on by two thugs as I walked out.

will work for...a little relaxation

Due to the local schools being on Fall Break Monday and Tuesday and my new practice schedule for crew I was only able to volunteer for an hour this week.  Despite the small amount of time I was able to give this week I still feel like I accomplished a lot.  Almost all of the children had at least one page of homework they needed to do.  They have begun grouping the children at different tables in the homework room by their class so one person can help multiple kids at the same time with the same assignment. 

            The first table I helped was a group of three 4^th grade boys with their Reading and Vocabulary worksheet.  None of the boys knew the meanings of any of the vocabulary words even words like humble and vain.  I help seven more kids with the same worksheet throughout the rest of Power Hour and not one of the ten kids knew what the Constitution was which I find to be a very frightening and concerning situation.

            Another thing I noticed was many of the boys are trying to act gangster or thug.  This is a really bad thing because several of them come from places where there are versions of gangs and I really don’t want them to get mixed up in that.  The boys are really sweet when they aren’t trying to act all bad and tough.  I hope that it is just acting because the club is supposed to prevent the kids from getting messed up in that.

            It really helped brighten my day when my little buddy smiled and came running up to me when she saw me.  It is such a nice feeling to know that I have made enough difference in some of the kids’ lives that they are happy to see me. 

We played an inside game, since it was raining, called Mr. Wolf that involved a lot of running.  Despite all the running involved in the game my little buddy and several of my other buddies insisted on holding my hands the entire time we played the game.  We weren’t very good at the game but they had fun anyway.

Volunteering was a bright spot in my very stressful week and I hope I will be able to go more next week.

Until next time…

XOXO Service Girl

Will work for...a some excitement

Unfortunately, I was only able to volunteer one day this week as well but on Monday instead of Friday.  There were a lot of kids that needed help with homework since it was the start of a new week.  There were also quite a few volunteers because three pharmacy organizations or clubs had volunteers there too. 

There was also a kid there who said that he was there on the last of his three days of community service; I believe he must have had a little run in with the law but he wouldn’t say anything besides that he was doing community service.  I am really sure if he likes working with kids or not because he told me that story when I asked him about how he liked volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club.  He also thought that I was one of the staff and not a volunteer. 

It was actually a good that there were a lot of volunteers today because most of the kids were able to have one-on-one help with their homework.  It was nice that most of the volunteers left at 4 o’clock though because too many seem to be distracting for the children during free play and adventure walks.  The children have a hard time staying in a single file line and having lots of volunteers walking beside the line draws even more of the kids out of the line.

During free play I helped a group of little girls build a block tower and clean it up after they toppled it, attempted to play a game of dominoes, and played kitchen with them.  They had a craft a little later, and I took the group of girls to make skeleton Halloween decorations.  It was pretty cute and they let me take mine home so I hung it on my dorm room door.

I also volunteered at Murdock Elementary School on Wednesday with Collegiate 4-H.  We taught a group of 12 third and fourth graders about 4-H.  It was not the best experience because the children were really unappreciative of our being there and the things we brought them.  I also had multiple kids tell me that they hate 4-H which was really hurtful because I was a 10-year member and 4-H means a lot to me.  I am not sure if I will go back…

Until next time…

XOXO Service Girl

Will work for...a Kiss Cam?

So I was really excited to go back to the Boys & Girls Club on Friday since I wasn’t able to go on Monday due to a night exam.  It was a good day because there were only five other volunteers so there were enough of us for a group activity with the kids after Power Hour but there weren’t so many of us that each kid had their own volunteer like a few weeks ago.  None of the kids of had homework so they all did Halloween themed activity sheets and coloring pages.  Watching the kids color is really funny because some of them try really hard and some of them just scribble all of the page with one color, usually black. 

The group activity for the day started with a fifteen minute, follow-the-leader walk around the neighborhood.  Then there was a game of kickball with two of the older kids being the team captains which made the teams pretty equal.  The game was also a good length because the supervisors cut the game off after a few kicking rounds for each team.  I was picked with one of the guy volunteers for one the teams and while we were waiting in line for our turn to kick one little girl tried to act as our own personal Kiss Cam.

There was another movie this week for the kids and it was Zoo Keeper.  I didn’t get to see it because all the kids who wanted to play with me wanted to play the board games.  The games ended up being really cool because they taught me how to play Mancala, a board game with marbles.  The point of the game is to try to get all the marbles into your pocket.  You pick up the marbles out of one hole and put one into each of the next holes until you run out.  You then pick up the ones from the last hole and continue until the hole you put the last marble doesn’t have any other marbles in it.  Every time you pass your pocket you drop a marble into it.  That was the last thing I did before I left.

Until next time…

XOXO Service

Will work for...directions

So Friday was my first time, volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club, in two weeks because of October Break.  The great thing was that I have my car now so I was able to drive to the Club instead of ride the bus.  The bad thing was that I arrived ten minutes late because I got lost despite that it was only three miles from campus.  I didn’t realize that there were so many one-way streets.  I did eventually get there without my GPS so I was really proud of myself.  There were not very many volunteers this Friday, just four fraternity guys and me, so we did not have a big group activity.  The kids didn’t have any homework so we spent the first hour doing Halloween worksheets and coloring pictures.  The kids seemed to be bored with coloring by the end of the hour.  They all seemed to have weird color choices for their pictures because they only chose dark colors and nothing cheery.  After coloring the kids got to play in the gym or watch a movie.  Several little girls wanted me to watch the movie with them so we went to the theater room to watch Alphas & Omegas.  It was a really cute movie about this pack of wolves that learned that an Alpha wolf could date an Omega wolf.  One of the little girls only made it through about fifteen minutes before she left the room.  After the movie the little girl who left convinced me to play ping-pong with her and another one of the volunteers.  The game was pretty boring because she couldn’t hit anything so the other volunteer and I started talking about Purdue.  The little girl actually managed to hit the ball to us and we missed it since we were talking.  She got really upset and told us and we couldn’t talk anymore.   We had to do the whole zip your lips and throw away the key thing for her.  She was cute and kept insisting that we couldn’t even laugh.  When people tell me that I can’t laugh then it makes me laugh even harder so she kept stopping her foot and telling me to stop.  It was a fun day but I was glad that it was over.

Until next time...

XOXO Service Girl

Will work for...a yes

I only volunteered once this week at the Boys & Girls club because of October Break.  There were a lot of other volunteers there on Monday this week to because several of the Purdue Pharmacy clubs were there for community service.  In fact, there were so many volunteers that each child had at least one if not two volunteers helping them.  The weather was amazing so after Power Hour I helped the staff lead the children on a “Follow the Leader” walk through the neighborhood around the club.  After the walk we also played a game of volunteer versus kids kickball.  There was a little girl, America, who was only five that needed help to run the bases.  During the walk and the game I ended up with several little girls that wanted my undivided attention.  Once we went back inside all the girls wanted me to play with them and of course they all wanted to do something different.  We compromised by doing what each of them wanted to do for a little while; we played basketball, jump rope, and ping pong.  I also ended up in the craft room making owl puppets with one girl who said she needed to talk to me alone.  So when she talked to me the first thing she said was “you know that thing I talked to you about the other day.”  That thing was that she “liked” one of the boys who also goes to the Boys & Girls Club.  She wanted to know how to tell if he liked her too.  The first time I told her to spend time with him when they were at the club.  The second time she wanted to know how to tell for sure but she shot down my idea for asking him or having her friends ask him.  We finally settled on the idea of her writing a note and having him check yes or not for whether he liked her.  She had me take the note to him and then bring it back to her; he checked yes.  It was so funny and reminded me of how simple life really was when we were in elementary school.  Sometimes I wish life was that simple again. 

Until next time…

XOXO Service Girl

Will work for...a bus ride!

When I walked in today, it seemed like a typical Friday at the Boys & Girls Club but within ten minutes it became even better because not a single kid had any type of homework.  There were also not any Learning Activity packets for the kids either, just coloring sheets!  We all spent the first hour just coloring which was so relaxing for me after a hard week of college.  Despite there being about ten other volunteers plus the staff I still had a group of five little girls coloring at my table.  One of the little girls decided that she wanted to color her picture exactly like mine with the same crayon that I had used; she was so cute.  Another little girl decided that she should get to tell me what color to color each item in the picture since I “clearly didn’t know anything” because I colored the pencils in the picture blue instead of yellow.  After the coloring we went to the gym since it was too cold to go outside.  The activity for the day was relays; these relays were way better than the ones from last week.  This week there were three different relays.  In the first one they had to bounce a ping pong ball on a paddle while weaving around cones once they got to the middle of the gym they did ten jumping jacks then crab walked to the other end up the gym where they sat on a floor scooter and scooted all the way back across the gym.  The second one started with them dribbling a basketball around the cones then once they made it to the middle they jumped rope ten times and spun around on a baseball bat five times before skipping the rest of the way across the gym to the scooter so they could scooter back.  The third one was really simple since they were all tired; they ran all the way across the gym then scootered back.  I spent the rest of my time turning a jump rope for some girls then doing a coloring contest.   I ended up running to crew practice again because the bus driver was talking on his phone and did not see me at the bus stop.

Until next time…

XOXO Service Girl