What Now America

For our nutrition activity this week we continued our discussion of the benefits of apples. We learned that apples are low in calorie, are filling, and are full of vitamins and fiber. Fiber is good for us because it prevents heart disease and arteriosclerosis, which is when fatty stuff builds up in the lining of your blood vessels and hardens. When this happens, blood can't get to where it needs to go! For our cooking activity we made our own delicious caramel apples! Our healthy modification was to cover only the lower half of the apple.

Ingredients:
Apples
Individually wrapped caramel squares

Popsicle stick or chopsticks

1. Unwrap the individually wrapped caramel squares.
2. Heat the caramel squares and water in a saucepan over low heat.
Cook, stirring often, until caramel melts and is smooth.

3. Stick the popsicle stick 3/4 of the way into the apple.

4. Dip the apple halfway into the caramel and rotate it on its side, making sure to cover the lower half.

5. Set on wax paper and place in fridge to set.
6. Enjoy!

For our physical activity this week we had a special guest, Vu, from UC Berkeley teach us the Taekwondo basics. We learned the stance and all the basic moves including front kick, axle kick, and roundhouse kick. The hardest move was the front kick followed by the roundhouse kick, but most of us got it! Finally, we learned how to stretched properly so that we wouldn't hurt the next day.

At the end of the day, our caramel apples had set, so we enjoyed them together before we went home.

Math fun? Chess exciting? It was this Saturday at WNA. The youth really got into the math and strategy games in the afternoon's social enrichment excersize. For the adults the best part was seeing the 'tough' boys let down their walls and become compeltely engrossed in the chess games. They thought, strategized, competed and learned - all in good fun! This is what it's all about.

This past Saturday was another fun art day. It’s fun both for the youth as well as the program committee. We, members of the program committee, sometimes find ourselves fighting over the art days because they are so much fun to plan and lead. Anyhow, have you heard of the Paper Box World or Cubeecraft? You should check them out, but in short, you print out these layouts of different characters like Ninja Turtles, Sonic, Chomp or what have you and its really simple... you cut out the shapes, fold on the dotted line and you have a “paper box” version of the character. In our case, to make it a little more challenging and artsy, we printed out the outlines of the shapes instead of the fully colored character so the youth could color it themselves. Here is Naar (Kid of the Day), and her “paper box” character, Chomp.

Today's theme revolved around personal hygiene. As basic as this may be, we decided this would be a good day to cover just how important it is to keep your body clean. We learned how personal hygiene plays an important role in keeping you healthy and feeling good about yourself. As a start to our day we decided to introduce this topic to our kids through using a resourceful child and youth health website: www.cyh.com. The students were asked to read about areas such as, smelling clean, clothes, shoes, feet, hair and teeth- we all agreed no  one enjoys being around a stinky person! As a group we completed a crossword puzzle together and had a group discussion about the importance of keeping up with our hygiene on a daily basis.