It has now officially been summer time at CSC for a few weeks now. Today marks the start of the second week of summer activities. I have had the privilige of being directly involved in activities this year, as I volunteered to be the cooking class teacher. There are 7 children in my class, 6 girls and one boy, all under 12! It is an energetic bunch to say the least! We meet 3 times a week, with a different cooking theme each week. Last week, we learned all about cake. On monday, the children spend time in the library on the school computers, looking up different kinds of cakes and their recipes. They each were to choose three favorites, and share them with the group. We then examined different aspects of cake making through videos (which of course they love!). The day was concluded by a fresh-made snack; on Monday it was carmel popcorn! On Wednesday we met again, and prepared to go grocery shoppping. The kids each had their own assignment for what to find at the store, which was exciting for them. On Friday, all of our hard work culminated into our baking experience. Last week, our recipe was a layered rainbow cake. It took about three hours of hard work and fun, and the product was quite incredible. Don't you agree?
Also this summer, I have been able to have small groups of the teenage girls over for overnights at my apartment. The girls are always super excited to find out who is next to sleep over. The evening begins with a shopping trip at a local grocery store. We purchace all the ingredients for dinner and snack that evening. Once we arrive at my apartment, the girls are in charge of making dinner. The last few times, the girls have decided on sloppy joes - an unfamiliar dish for all of them! Once dinner is over we do a variety of activities, ranging from: zumba, painting nails, watching youtube videos, and singing. We close the evening by watching two movies, projected on the wall, and having a snack. The girls are especially excited because they get to stay up late! When they get up in the morning, they are treated to chocolate chip pancakes before packing up and heading back to the shelter.
The kids at CSC are having a blast this summer, and can't wait to start each new day to see what it will bring. Please continue to pray for the safety and health of our kids as they go about their summer activities.
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!
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!
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:
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.
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!