Hope for Kids - 4

This will be our fourth Hope for Kids session and the third visit to the hospital.
We aim to entertain the children at the hospital but at the same time, we've decided to try something a little bit different.
 We brought along the usual equipment such as the board games, necklace making set and drawing equipment but we wanted to see if we could test out a more educational approach. Bringing along some work sheets (it's as fun as it sounds) that will improve their spelling and some plastic letters, we spoke to two older children to see if they wanted to give it a go.
They seemed reluctant at first but they succumbed to our incessant nagging and off we went.
Turns out it was as boring as it sounded and was too difficult since they didn't speak any English.

We played snakes and ladders instead.

Drawing Club - 4

Drawing club! How wonderful it is.

As I said I would last time, I did something more worthwhile. I experimented with tone and shading with three-dimensional objects. By observing simple shapes like spheres and square-based pyramids, I can see where the light is cast from and where the shadow lies. This allows me to more easily draw out a realistic representation of the object despite not being very good at drawing.

I hope to better develop this skill.

Friday Basketball - 3

Woo. It's the end of the week which marks another splendid lesson of basketball! More warm-ups, more full court games, more running, shooting, stealing... Sounds like a robbery.

I play as though it's an actual game (most of the time) so it can be very tiring. I need to improve my endurance otherwise I wont be able to compete against all the other players at the SAISA tournament.
There's not a whole lot to say about this activity because it's very repetitive but it is enjoyable nonetheless. Go basketball.

Hope for Kids - 3

Our third Hope for Kids was different from the other two. This time we didn't visit the hospital because we wanted to meet as a group and decide what direction we're heading in. We thought it would be a good idea to raise some money to help the children in a way that escapes me as I type this. We'll be selling milkshakes of various flavours at the school. Yes, I'm advertising it on my blog, although no one will see this except for my favourite teacher Mr. Lockwood. Haha.

Anyway, we're going to continue with the board-games and all that fun business but as I've stated in a previous post, we want to see if we can teach them some important applications such as mathematics and reading. What's important is relative though.

Drawing Club - 3

Today is the third Drawing Club lesson and the second I've attended. This is because I was absent for the second lesson. I was completely devastated that I missed the previous one but life goes on. Today wasn't particularly eventful, most of the students were not here and I drew a few pictures that I've seem to misplaced.
For the next lesson I plan to practice some techniques to develop skills. Maybe some shading practice will do be good. Who knows.

Friday Basketball - 2

Friday basketball is a good way to develop and maintain basketball skills and stay in shape for the upcoming basketball tournament. The activity itself doesn't really vary but I don't think it needs to. It usually consists of a warm-up at the beginning and then we play 5v5 full court for the rest of the time we have left. Playing a sport helps improve collaboration skills and measures your level of perseverance because I've already seen a few kids pull out of the activity.

All in all, it was another good way to end the day.

Hope for Kids - 2

This visit was more or less the same as our first but we brought along some more sources of entertainment. The most popular addition to our activities seemed to be the necklace making one. We brought along string, beads, sequences etc. and let the children loose on them. It looked as though they were thoroughly enjoying creating their own necklaces so that was a highlight.

Next time we visit the hospital, we hope to possibly have a more academic approach. Maybe teaching them simple addition and subtraction will be a good idea because they fall behind on their academic learning due to being bound to the hospital. This touches on an issue of global importance which is that children around the world have limited access to education, especially children that are sick and are unable to attend a learning institution.

Friday Basketball - 1

I end my favourite day of the week with my favourite sport. Friday basketball is a lot fun that is a good method to developing my skills in preparation for SAISA basketball. You can decide to play casually and just use the activity as a source of exercise or you can play as though it's a proper game, although it gets pretty tiring because the activity takes place on the outdoor courts.

We usually start each lesson with a warm up and some exercises to get ready for the game. We usually have an even amount of players for a game (6v6) so it's perfect. Although on occasion we have extra members that serve as substitutes. I look forward to the next lesson.

Hope for Kids - 1

Our first Hope for Kids activity consisted of visiting the children at the hospital to entertain them for an hour or so. Because it was our first time seeing them for the majority of our group, we planned on making the purpose of the visit more about getting to know them and learning about their stories.

Upon our arrival, unsurprisingly, the children had absolutely no interest in greetings. We decided to just proceed with the more fun activities. We brought along paper with crayons and pencils, board-games and picture stories in both English and Sinhalese. I believe this service is addressing a matter of global importance because we're learning about and getting to know the struggles that people go through when faced with cancer and we aim to improve their day as much as we can by seeing them almost every week.

Drawing Club - 1

I went to my first drawing club session. I'm doing for the creativity component of CAS. I also want to increase my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth and develop my drawing skills which are lacking. As a small group, we decided on what to draw by using just our imagination and afterwards, we tried drawing the same thing but with an image as guidance. The first class was interesting because it reminded me of how bad my drawing skills are. This has only motivated me to persevere with the activity and improve as much as I can.