What Now America

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. 

The First Saturday of the month is SCIENCE DAY! This Saturday we decided to cover the anatomy of the eye and we had such an educational and fun filled day. First we had the students go to the computer lab and research the various parts of the eye and complete handout exercises. They also learned about science experiments and activities on activitytv.com. 

Our 2nd Annual Back to School event summarized into 4 minutes: