Hey guys! I am back from my wonderful experience in South Africa! Spending two weeks with my mom and seeing family and friends was absolutely amazing. I swam in the National championships which went well, but I am back to Summit.
Volunteering has been going well. I am stationed in the infant room, which has been an interesting experience. When I first started only two of the babies could walk or crawl. Now, a few months later, all of them can either crawl or walk. It has gone from a calm room, to a room full of crazy boys getting into everything. We sing and dance with them, read to them, and even paint with them. Those little boys have so much energy it is hard to keep up!
Our project this semester was an easter egg hunt that actually took place today. It ended up going really really well. We had more than enough eggs for the kids, which was great because they don't often get treats like the one they got today. We began our project by gather our supplies with turned out to be more of a challenge than we first expected. Many of the parents of the children at Lighthouse don't want their kids eating sweets. Because of this we had to find treat like things that weren't actually unhealthy. We ended up filling the eggs with stickers, miniature boxes of raisins, and organic fruit snacks. By doing this we were able to make the kids and the parents happy. After stuffing the 250 or more eggs, we had to hide them all. We separated the kids into two groups. For the older group we actually hid the eggs. For the little ones, however, we laid the eggs in various spots on the grass. Once all of the eggs were hidden we brought the kids out side to the play ground and let them loose! It was a lot of fun to see them running around finding as many eggs as they were allowed. The little ones were a bit confused at first but once they caught on they ran around picking up as many eggs as they could fit into their bags. All together it was a great day!
I cannot believe the semester is almost over! I have 4 more hours of volunteering to do and then I am done at Lighthouse. Thinking about it though, volunteering with the infants has been such a wonderful experience that I think I might continue some next year!
Tiffany
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Hey Summit!!
Hey Guys! Hope all is well. Almost done with what has seemed like the busiest semester of my life. I can't believe it's almost over though. Tiff will be back on Monday from her meet in South Africa! Yay! Then we will have our easter egg hunt on wednesday and we are really looking forward to that. Like Deanna said, getting ready for it will be a lot of fun!! We will take a night and fill all of the eggs with candy and stuff. The kids will be so cute searching for them. They love being outside, so hopefully the weather will be nice enough for them to do that. I am still working on my hours, but since I have been a teacher aide as well this semester, balancing time has been hard with Nationals and being sick, but I am working on it! I have really enjoyed being with this group of kids. Some days they are hard to handle, but they have been doing great now.
I think that the teachers have really appreciated us working there. I think that they needed our extra hands with the kids sometimes. The kids also bond with us and love us being there with them. Its fun sometimes for little ones to meet new people and get to have someone else there. Lighthouse has really done a great job with their new facility. I feel that it has been much more organized than the other location. I know that we as a group have enjoyed working at this one more as well. It is definitely different going between working at a high school (which is where my teaching is) to volunteering at a daycare. It's fun to play cute games with them and just "be a kid" again.
When I first started lighthouse, I honestly didn't like working in any room but the infant room. I have now grown to really like the preschoolers (of course still love the little babies). I have a huge respect for preschool teachers and think that the lighthouse organization is doing a great thing! I hope they keep it up for many years to come.
-Jessica
I think that the teachers have really appreciated us working there. I think that they needed our extra hands with the kids sometimes. The kids also bond with us and love us being there with them. Its fun sometimes for little ones to meet new people and get to have someone else there. Lighthouse has really done a great job with their new facility. I feel that it has been much more organized than the other location. I know that we as a group have enjoyed working at this one more as well. It is definitely different going between working at a high school (which is where my teaching is) to volunteering at a daycare. It's fun to play cute games with them and just "be a kid" again.
When I first started lighthouse, I honestly didn't like working in any room but the infant room. I have now grown to really like the preschoolers (of course still love the little babies). I have a huge respect for preschool teachers and think that the lighthouse organization is doing a great thing! I hope they keep it up for many years to come.
-Jessica
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
April Showers bring Summit Flowers
Helloooo Summit!
How was everyone's Technology Fast? Awesome right?! Well I actually thought it was but that is besides the point. Our apartment is doing very well. We are all getting antsy for the summer though. Tiff is still in South Africa kicking butt and hopefully she will be back again with us on Monday! Lighthouse is better than ever. Tomorrow is the last time I'm going to go in by myself to volunteer! I can't believe it's almost been the second semester already! I'm not complaining however, and I'm sure you aren't either! We haven't made much progress with Lighthouse so far besides the hours we go volunteer there, but what we are looking forward to the most is the Easter Egg Hunt we are planning for them! I know through all of my work in the Purple Room with the preschoolers I have gotten so close to the kids and I can't wait to see their faces when we show them what we have done for them! I'm not so excited about stuffing the eggs full of goodies but it just calls for another girls movie night!
Lighthouse has grown so much as an organization over the past semester. They have organized so much and they seem to really have things under control. They are really fitting into the church nicely and the kids are responding to it very well. That is one of my favorite parts about working with Lighthouse. I feel like I am making such a difference there. When I work in the Purple Room, the teachers always thank me a million times when my hour is up, and even when I'm working for Dolly, I can just see the appreciative look on her face. She doesn't have an hour in her day to file papers like I do and when there is a lot on her plate she really looks to us to help out. I love being a part of that.
One of the things that challenged me about Lighthouse was that being with the kids somedays was very stressful and hard work. It didn't dampen my experience at all, it was just one of those things you have to deal with. They would misbehave and treat their teachers very disrespectful somedays and you could just tell how hard it was for the teachers who had to work there. I give them all kudos for doing everyday what I did twice a week only for an hour. And I got stressed in that amount of time!
Apart for tomorrow's last hour and the Easter Egg Hunt our Lighthouse days are coming to a close faster than we know it. It is sad, but we know we can always go and volunteer there now if we ever wanted to. It is a good feeling to know that. Also, it has been such a pleasure meeting all of the kids and staff. It opened my eyes to a world that I might be facing here before I know it and it gave me good experience that I will need for the future. I loved working there and being apart of all of their families. As a little boy Genard told me once, "I love you mommy." And even though it was really scary hearing that, it was also kind of a cool thing. I hope you guys have had as awesome experience as we have with this project. See you all in class Friday!
Deanna
How was everyone's Technology Fast? Awesome right?! Well I actually thought it was but that is besides the point. Our apartment is doing very well. We are all getting antsy for the summer though. Tiff is still in South Africa kicking butt and hopefully she will be back again with us on Monday! Lighthouse is better than ever. Tomorrow is the last time I'm going to go in by myself to volunteer! I can't believe it's almost been the second semester already! I'm not complaining however, and I'm sure you aren't either! We haven't made much progress with Lighthouse so far besides the hours we go volunteer there, but what we are looking forward to the most is the Easter Egg Hunt we are planning for them! I know through all of my work in the Purple Room with the preschoolers I have gotten so close to the kids and I can't wait to see their faces when we show them what we have done for them! I'm not so excited about stuffing the eggs full of goodies but it just calls for another girls movie night!
Lighthouse has grown so much as an organization over the past semester. They have organized so much and they seem to really have things under control. They are really fitting into the church nicely and the kids are responding to it very well. That is one of my favorite parts about working with Lighthouse. I feel like I am making such a difference there. When I work in the Purple Room, the teachers always thank me a million times when my hour is up, and even when I'm working for Dolly, I can just see the appreciative look on her face. She doesn't have an hour in her day to file papers like I do and when there is a lot on her plate she really looks to us to help out. I love being a part of that.
One of the things that challenged me about Lighthouse was that being with the kids somedays was very stressful and hard work. It didn't dampen my experience at all, it was just one of those things you have to deal with. They would misbehave and treat their teachers very disrespectful somedays and you could just tell how hard it was for the teachers who had to work there. I give them all kudos for doing everyday what I did twice a week only for an hour. And I got stressed in that amount of time!
Apart for tomorrow's last hour and the Easter Egg Hunt our Lighthouse days are coming to a close faster than we know it. It is sad, but we know we can always go and volunteer there now if we ever wanted to. It is a good feeling to know that. Also, it has been such a pleasure meeting all of the kids and staff. It opened my eyes to a world that I might be facing here before I know it and it gave me good experience that I will need for the future. I loved working there and being apart of all of their families. As a little boy Genard told me once, "I love you mommy." And even though it was really scary hearing that, it was also kind of a cool thing. I hope you guys have had as awesome experience as we have with this project. See you all in class Friday!
Deanna
Summit Spring Fever
Hello Summit! Spring is in the air, and I am so ready for summer to be here. Only one month of school left! Woohoo! That does also mean that we will soon have to move out of Summit, which is sad, because I love our apartment and my roomies. All good things have to come to an end at some point though.
Things at Lighthouse have been going really well this semester. In my opinion, the agency has appreciated our help a lot more this semester than last semester. During the fall semester, I felt like they were so busy getting ready for the location change, that they never really had time to plan work for us. This led to a lot of awkward moments when we didn't really know what was expected of us or how to best help out. This spring semester, however, it has been much easier to make a difference. A lot of progress has been made towards identifying the roles we play at Lighthouse and in feeling like we are making more of a difference. In fall semester, they often wouldn't have things planned for us to do and would just assign us somewhere at the spur of the moment. This semester, Dolly always has a task set aside for me to do, which helps me know what they expect of me. I view this as a major accomplishment in communication between us and Lighthouse.
This past month, the greatest experience for me at the agency was, oddly enough, filing papers in the children's family binders. I know this sounds like a really boring task, and it wasn't super exciting, but it did open my eyes to the work Lighthouse does. While I was filing, I noticed the number of family binders that were on the shelf. All of the children aren't present in the center everyday, so it's hard to gauge the number of kids at Lighthouse. By seeing the number of binders, I got a better idea of just how many kids Lighthouse helps. I realized that the majority of these families would have a much more difficult time finding quality childcare if it wasn't for the services Lighthouse provides. This experience made me really proud to be helping out at an organization that helps so many others.
The greatest challenge at the agency for me this month was volunteering in the Purple Preschool Room. I only helped out in there for an hour one day, but while I was in there, utter chaos ensued. One of the girls started throwing a hardcore temper tantrum complete with hitting the classroom teacher and ear-splitting screams. This all occurred right before nap time, so I was faced with the task of trying to get all of the other kids on their cots. Since there was so much noise, the kids didn't want to go to sleep or lay down, so it was a somewhat frustrating experience for me. It was even harder since I didn't know any of the children or the teacher.
On Wednesday of next week, April 20, from 3-4, we will be putting on an Easter egg hunt at Lighthouse. :) We are all really excited about this event, and I absolutely love Easter, so it should be a great time. Next Monday night, we are going shopping for the eggs and some kind of healthy treat or prize to put inside them, since many parents at Lighthouse are health-conscious. On Wednesday, we are going to go in early to hide all of the eggs on the playgrounds. Hopefully this is a fun event for the kids, and hopefully it goes smoothly! After the preparation for the event and the actual hunt, I will only have a couple more volunteer hours left at Lighthouse, so those will go by very quickly.
That's all for now, but I will see everyone at class on Friday! Happy Spring! :)
Things at Lighthouse have been going really well this semester. In my opinion, the agency has appreciated our help a lot more this semester than last semester. During the fall semester, I felt like they were so busy getting ready for the location change, that they never really had time to plan work for us. This led to a lot of awkward moments when we didn't really know what was expected of us or how to best help out. This spring semester, however, it has been much easier to make a difference. A lot of progress has been made towards identifying the roles we play at Lighthouse and in feeling like we are making more of a difference. In fall semester, they often wouldn't have things planned for us to do and would just assign us somewhere at the spur of the moment. This semester, Dolly always has a task set aside for me to do, which helps me know what they expect of me. I view this as a major accomplishment in communication between us and Lighthouse.
This past month, the greatest experience for me at the agency was, oddly enough, filing papers in the children's family binders. I know this sounds like a really boring task, and it wasn't super exciting, but it did open my eyes to the work Lighthouse does. While I was filing, I noticed the number of family binders that were on the shelf. All of the children aren't present in the center everyday, so it's hard to gauge the number of kids at Lighthouse. By seeing the number of binders, I got a better idea of just how many kids Lighthouse helps. I realized that the majority of these families would have a much more difficult time finding quality childcare if it wasn't for the services Lighthouse provides. This experience made me really proud to be helping out at an organization that helps so many others.
The greatest challenge at the agency for me this month was volunteering in the Purple Preschool Room. I only helped out in there for an hour one day, but while I was in there, utter chaos ensued. One of the girls started throwing a hardcore temper tantrum complete with hitting the classroom teacher and ear-splitting screams. This all occurred right before nap time, so I was faced with the task of trying to get all of the other kids on their cots. Since there was so much noise, the kids didn't want to go to sleep or lay down, so it was a somewhat frustrating experience for me. It was even harder since I didn't know any of the children or the teacher.
On Wednesday of next week, April 20, from 3-4, we will be putting on an Easter egg hunt at Lighthouse. :) We are all really excited about this event, and I absolutely love Easter, so it should be a great time. Next Monday night, we are going shopping for the eggs and some kind of healthy treat or prize to put inside them, since many parents at Lighthouse are health-conscious. On Wednesday, we are going to go in early to hide all of the eggs on the playgrounds. Hopefully this is a fun event for the kids, and hopefully it goes smoothly! After the preparation for the event and the actual hunt, I will only have a couple more volunteer hours left at Lighthouse, so those will go by very quickly.
That's all for now, but I will see everyone at class on Friday! Happy Spring! :)
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