Jerry Salgo is one of the many people behind the scene making everything go smoothly. He is in charge of the CSC facilities, along with the maintenance and security personnel. While classes have been out on break, his team has been working to repaint and restore the school so that it will look as good as new when the students return near the end of June.
One of the projects they were working on was removing a
whirlpool from the therapy room. Cebu Children of Hope School acquired the
whirlpool several years ago and it was a great asset, meeting some of the
physical therapy needs of our kids. It has since worn out its welcome and is no
longer being used. The decision was made to remove it and sell it if possible. Uncle
Jerry, being the conscientious steward that he is, needed first to ensure that
it was working properly. As a man of high integrity, no task is too small or too
silly for him to oversee the details personally. It is one of the many reasons
we appreciate his hard work.
Once the removal is complete a new project will begin. The therapists, Jinkee Reasoner and Marwin Abong, have begun developing plans for a sensory wall to be installed. This will provide different tactile stimulation and be part of the therapy treatment for kids 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!
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!