Almost as
soon as I finished writing my September post when I had given up hope of
starting STEM mentoring, I received word on beginning to volunteer. The first
time I started it was chaos when I entered the Boys and Girls club, so many
children running around and yelling happily. My group consisted of only four
kids from 6-9 years of age so I at least had some chance of leading them. I
arrived in time for the endangered animals module so all the activities will be
geared towards promoting conservation and knowledge of various species.
We began
with learning about monarch butterflies and the children made butterfly feeders
with great effort. It was a monumental task of keeping them engaged and focused
and I truly applaud elementary school teachers who have a full classroom to
manage. But finally after a long 20 minutes of introduction for the five of us,
in which one of my adorable group members gave a lengthy discussion of her
favorite TV show. We finally got to the task at hand; only to have the video of
butterfly lifecycles fail to load. In the end, I resorted to the dry reading as
the introduction. But at the end of it all, the children did manage to decorate
their feeders and make nectar out of sugar and water thanks to the help of the
other mentor who had long since finished the task with her kids. And I think I
managed to get the idea of conservation into the children’s heads. The youngest
six year old asked me with big eyes, “but why are we destroying the
butterflies’ habitat?” All in all, it ended up being a great experience and I
can’t wait to start the next class!
Total hours for October: 4 hours
Total volunteer hours: 23 hours
