WEEK 3 @ CHAMPS

This week I attended observations with the CHAMPS program on Monday and Wednesday. I felt that both days went well. On Monday, my child and I sat down and did his homework for the entire homework time. This impressed me a lot. Then we ate a healthy snack and had some free time to play on the turf. We played football and had a lot of fun. On Wednesday, my child had no homework but brought an empty poster board with him. He figured he could draw on it during homework time since he had none. At first he was not sure what to draw but then I gave him an idea to make a poster for the CHAMPS program. He loved the idea and worked on it from start to finish. When he was down he gave it to the program and we hung it on the wall. To reward him for his gift, I gave him a sticker to put on his next to his name on the CHAMPS All-star poster. This is a way that CHAMPS rewards the children for doing special things such as going out of their way to help another classmate. I really like it because when we give the awards we announce them to the class which makes the children feel great. It also lets the other children in the program know the type of behavior that we are looking for in the program. For the rest of the day, we had our healthy snack and then the 201 students taught games on the turf. Overall, it was a good week at CHAMPS.

CHAMPS Week 2

This week I did not have observations on Monday because the children had off for Columbus Day. I did however, have observations on Wednesday. It was a good day. There were three new children added to the CHAMPS program and one of them was assigned to me. He is a great kid and I am happy to have the chance to work with him for the remainder of the semester. He is incredible well behaved and has a great work ethic. On this day we painted pumpkins. The children got a big kick out of it. Afterwards, we had about an hour to play on the turf and do what ever we wanted with our students. My children decided to play soccer. Overall, I would say today was a great day and the children seemed to enjoy themselves very much.

Champs

This past Monday, October 4th, 2009 and yesterday, October 7th, 2009 I started my observations at the J.M. McDonalds center in Homer. This was my first experience at this complex and I could not believe how big it was. I was extremely impressed by what the complex had to offer. It had an ice rink, a weightlifting gym, a gymnastics gym, a very good sized turf field and a floor hockey/tennis court. This is just what I was able to see. I still need to take a true tour of the complex to see all the other great things it has to offer. As for the experience itself, I was very impressed by the CHAMPS program. Since there was a lack of mentors, I was assigned a child who was new to the program. Like me, it was his first day too. The first thing I did when all the other children arrived was walked around with my student and helped him to introduce himself to every mentor and child. I feel like this helped him get all the nervousness out and gave him some confidence. On top of that, the teacher noticed his braveness and gave him an award in front of the class. I thought it was as good of a start a child can get on a first day at a new program. After all that, I helped him with his multiplication tables because he had no other homework. Next was snack time and then we got to play on the turf. Overall, I think the program is organized nicely and I am looking forward to continuing my experiences there in the coming weeks.