Community Garden

A few months ago I was sitting with some community members brainstorming things to do with the kids in our summer day camp program. We want to have fun like a normal summer camp but we also wanted to be able to give kids experiences and lessons that could be practical to their lives. One of the ideas was to have a gardening class where  kids could work in local gardens doing everything from planting, to weeding, to harvesting,  to finally eating the fruits of the land. From this meeting I was inspired to start a garden of my own.

Last weekend was a big day in the life of our garden. After many hours spent digging; tilling; picking out: glass, bricks, sparkplugs; and organizing we finally planted seeds in the soil. It has been amazing to see a grass field transformed into a vegetable garden. The most surprising thing in the whole process has been the amount of broken glass that is in the earth. I guess that is what you get when you garden in the inner city.

We have planted:potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, radish, various herbs, sunflowers, peas, beans, squash, and cucumbers. I was a little disappointed that, I had invited a handful of kids to help us plant, but we happened to be planting on the hottest day of the year.The kids said the 90 degree temperatures kept them away. I am sure there will be plenty of work for them to help in the future so I am still hopeful that they will learn with me.

Our first bud was a potato I took from my kitchen and planted a few weeks ago. It is looking great!

Getting ready to plant

Best view of how big the plot is. When we started the land was no different from the grass you see around it.

Snow days

It is snowing in Richmond today...again. I have only taught one day of school this week, and on that day we had a two hour delay so my classes were only 35 minutes.

I have gotten to do a lot of reading, a lot of relaxing, and a lot of bonding with my house mates. At this point though I am tired of having free time and I want to get back to work. When they cancel school they also cancel after school tutoring, so we have also had a severe lack of kids in the house. I did however play a few games of chess with an 8th grader named James in my chess class. He lives a block away and stopped by yesterday.

Below is a picture of the hot air balloon I made a week or two ago. Unfortunately on its maiden flight it caught fire and ended in a small pile of ash. It was a little embarrassing because I had invited James, Pam, and Lavelle (kids down the street that come to tutoring) to watch.

MLK day

Martin Luther King Jr. day was a lot of fun here at CHAT. To honor his work we decided to do a little community service. With about 80 kids and volunteers we went on a competitive trash pick-up around the neighborhood. Ny'ajah, Dink, Destiny, Dashawna, Chauncey and I were able to fill about two large trash bags halfway in the hour we spent looking for trash. I was elated that picking up trash could be so fun. Starting out every piece of trash got counted and enthusiastically thrown into a bag, but within the first few blocks as the count got into the 100's the energy level went down. As with most things in life, the thrill of doing something new  wore off, and by the time we returned I noticed that my whole group would walk past a piece of trash before I would stop to pick it up. Although my group only filled 1-2 bags I was impressed by a group of our high schoolers who were able to fill eleven  trash bags full! I like to think that age and time spent focusing on a task are directly correlated so that I can blame my groups performance on their age and not my leadership.  Either way altogether we collected about 20 bags of trash from the streets.

To reward their hard work we had a little fun as well. We took the whole group to Roller Dome skating rink and then to CiCi's Pizza. Skating was a blast, especially trying to get the youngest kids to let go of the railing and try skating on their own.

I feel sorry for CiCi's Pizza (an all you can eat pizza place) Showing up with 80 people was probably the last thing the employees wanted to see. I can't be sure but if they decide to change their Kids-eat-Free on Monday  night special I can't blame them.

I hope everyone had a great MLK Day.

Merry Christmas

On our last day of after school tutoring the students get together for a picture on my front porch.

Beach Camping

Every Wednesday for the last 6 weeks I have been doing an outdoors class with CHAT. These classes are used as incentives for kids who participate in our reading program. Last weekend our class culminated with a trip to False Cape state park where we used the skills we had learned in our class.We packed back packs and went on

our way planning to spend two nights camping out on the beach. Arriving after dark we ran into some trouble getting into the state park and ended up just sleeping out in sand dunes. The weather was relatively nice so even though we had practiced setting up tents in the class we didn't even use them.

I was impressed with all the kids for not complaining even though we asked them to sleep on sand without tents. The night got pretty cold and wet with the dew but the sunrise over the ocean was well worth it the following morning.

In the morning we had the kids cook

pancakes on camping stoves which was something else we had practiced

in our class. Although the first few tries were rough I was surprised that

by the end these mostly middle

schoolers could make a pretty good looking pancake.

After breakfast we got all our gear loaded up and went for a hike.After breakfast we got all our gear loaded up and went for a hike down the beach. Thankfully we had beautiful weather. I even got to take a little swim.

We walked about 6 miles that day, which was a huge accomplishment for some of the kids. I think it was the farthest they had ever walked in one day. This time we made it to the state park and spent the night again sleeping on sand under the stars.

The kids had a great time. They don't get many chances to go somewhere to just have fun for a whole weekend. And with 4 chaperons and 6 kids they all get individual attention which they so desperately crave.

I was thankful for the opportunity to go but the weekend but the weekend really wore me out so i couldn't help cathing a few zzz's on the way home.

Halloween celebration

For Halloween we had a big neighborhood party.

There were carnival type games in our backyard ( to the left) where you could win candy.

I spent most of the night in our haunted house. We transformed our basement into a pretty horrifying haunted house. I have never heard so many kids cry before, but they really l

iked it. They like to claim afterwards they they were never scared even though they were screaming in fear. Here are two kids running out they were so afraid.

Kids inside enjoyed face painting and arts and crafts

with cupcakes and cookies.

Overall a great Halloween celebration

Pumpkin Experimnents at CHA

The day before Halloween and lab day at Church Hill Academy we couldn't resist doing experiments with pumpkins, here is the grand finale.

A few students were very interested in this chemical reaction and asked if it would work inside a car gas tank. I am hoping that experiments like this will get them interested in science, but some of them may be too interested now.