Staff Blog
What time of day would you most like to be at the Shelter?
Early morning is a good time. The children are up early and having devotions in their homes with their house parents. You could stand outside in the playground and listen to them singing and praying.
Right after breakfast is another good time. During the school year the children are getting ready to head up to school. Some are just finishing up their chores, perhaps watering the plants. The toddlers are going out to play. There is lots of anticipation of the day ahead.
Mid-morning is Toddler Time, with special play and learning activities planned for the kids who are too young for pre-school. The kids are amazingly cute and really enjoy this time of learning and exploring.
Lunch time. The school kids head home to eat and discuss the morning school activities.
Afternoon. Things are pretty quiet with the younger children taking naps and the older ones at school. But there is a lot going on. The washing ladies are doing load after load of diapers and clothes for the children. Maintenance staff are doing gardening, cleaning screens and windows. The cooks clean up the kitchen and start the preparations for dinner. Meetings are going on in the child care and medical offices.
After school. This is the noisy time as all ages of children attack the playground. Some ride scooters around the sidewalk circumference. Some play basketball or soccer. The younger ones use the swings and slide. Babies in strollers go up the driveway. Older children organize games of tag and dodgeball.
5:00 p.m. A bell is rung and the children wind down their games. (At least in theory, they do!) The younger ones have their baths. The older children do their chores around the grounds. Its fun to watch them work together, enjoying each other and learning about responsibility and work.
6:00 is suppertime. Some of the kids help set the table, others will clean up and do the dishes. Good nutritious food is served and the children are thankful. They will do a unison "thank you auntie" for the cook.
After supper its time to do homework or, if none, to play board games or read. On weekends the kids will watch a DVD or be allowed to play outside. The house parents or staff members will pray with the kids after homework is finished. By 9:00 everyone is in bed and, not so much later, sound asleep. It is great to walk around the grounds and marvel at what God is doing at CSC.
J-O-Y!
Loving life....and more specifically....hackysacks! :)
Thank you to our visitors for giving every kid their very own hackysack---as you can see, they were eagerly received!
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SRA Day!
Last Friday was SRA Day at school! SRA is our reading curriculum so it includes reading, writing, and spelling! We spent the morning having some fun reviewing things the kids had learned in SRA throughout the year. It started off with one student from each level sharing why they like SRA. Then we had a cheer competition. The children were divided into four groups and each group had 10 minutes to create their own cheer about SRA or reading. It was cool to see what they came up with!
After the cheering competition was the spelling contest! The kids took turns writing letters or words on the white board as a review of things they had learned. They also drew pictures that related to some of the themes our classes had studied. Some of the older kids went up and explained how their pictures related to the theme.
The final part of the program involved several presentations by our kids. The Level A students performed sang "The Alphabet Song". Jaime and Pretchy each did a beautiful job sharing poems about reading! Shiela & Rowena sang a duet of "America the Beautiful", a song they learned in one of their reading units. Then three of our Level C students shared stories they had written during class.
Here are some more pictures from our exciting day!
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Friends
Friendships are an important part of life at CSC. Although most of our children have siblings at CSC (about two thirds), they all seek out friends in their age group and enjoy hanging out, playing, making music and talking about life. Our kids can easily find friends who have similar backgrounds and can understand and accept what they have gone through in life. Some friendships can go on for several years, depending on how long the children stay at CSC. When a child leaves for adoption there are often sad friends left behind who wonder if they'll ever see them again. In some cases, friendships that began at CSC can pick up later on when children are placed in the same geographical area. Check out a few pictures of friends at CSC:
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Movie Night
One of the things we often hear at CSC is laughter, and one of the best places to hear it is during a movie night.
It's hard to organize a trip to the movie theater, so often times staff will gather up a group of kids and setup the projector in the library at the school. The movie night below was a "girl's night out" that Teacher Lindsay organized. However, being the IT guy, I was allowed to attend because I had to setup the screen and projector. :)
The movie was Mr. Popper's Penguins.
It's hard to see much in the video below, but it's really fun to listen to the laughter of the kids.
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The Littlest Waveboarder
Waveboarding is the cool thing to do during playtime here at CSC. Lots of the older kids got waveboards for Christmas, but recently more and more of the little kids want to try the waveboards as well. The other day I noticed this little lady trying out her older sister's waveboard in the driveway and I couldn't stop laughing - it was so cute! And she's so good at it!
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