Service Hours 2

BBQ- 3 hours. Another activity I did for service learning was help put on a bbq for the team at the Bozone Brewery. It unfortunately was not a success due to the fact our communication skill were lacking. Me and JR went to Costco to get food and it was fun running around and finding everything. We should have been organized and wrote a list however because we almost forgot a lot of the food. While we were shopping we texted our teamamtes and made sure there was a bbq that we could use and they assured us that someone was bringing us a bbq. After getting the food and plates and drinks we went home to get ready and drove to the Bozone. When we arrived we found that there was no bbq and we all frantically called everyone we knew to find one. We started an hour late and when we started cooking the wind picked up and we lost a lot of our plates.

Watching the church Kids- 4 hours I wrote a paper on this experience so i just included it in here.

Every weekend that I return to my small Montana hometown I ask my grandma if she would like me to teach her Sunday school class for her. My grandpa is the pastor of a small country Baptist church and my grandma hardly ever has any help and never gets to listen to the service. My passion is for kids so I love reading to them the stories that I had read to me and help them with the same crafts that I was so proud to give to my father after the service.

     This particular weekend was very busy which is unusual for our small town. It is very hard for everyone to make church on a regular basis with chores like haying and calving. This last weekend however, was my grandparent’s 50^th wedding anniversary and everyone in the community and my family in Montana decided to have a banquet for them Saturday night.

     Because everyone in the community knew and adored my grandparents there were roughly 15-20 young children at the church. The youngest infant only about 2 months old stayed close to her mom’s side, asleep in her carrier. The next youngest was a little over a year. She was my cousin’s youngest daughter ShyAnne and a very quiet little girl. The rest of the kid’s ages varied from three years to ten. Children older than that hung out in a different room with an old pool table and couches and air hockey. Most of the older kids were my cousins or children I grew up with in the valley. The room used for day care was a very colorful room with a mural on the wall of a scene you would find in the movie Bambi. There were deer, bunnies, birds, raccoons, skunks, birds, and squirrels. My grandma is an artist and painted the room herself before I was born. There is a crib and a wall of shelves loaded with toys. Some of the toys are very old and some are newer donations. There is a rocking chair and a table with paper and crayons and legos. The daycare is attached to a bigger room with two picnic tables painted yellow and red. On the walls are cartoon pictures of Bible stories. In the front of the room is a craft closet, an easel with a felt story board, a dresser full of art supplies, and a treasure chest filled with small trinkets. The treasure chest served as an incentive to most of the children. If they behave like perfect ladies and gentleman and can tell the teacher one thing that they learned in class they are allowed to reach into the chest and pull something out. The chest is filled with balls, beads, plastic watches, animals, stickers, and other cheap little shiny things that can brighten up a child’s night.

      Saturday night my best friend Katie helped me out with the large group of children we had. We were not necessarily having a lesson because it was not an actual Sunday sermon but we were taking the children after they had eaten with their parents so that the parents could socialize and listen to the various speeches that were being given out. After we had eaten Katie went into the nursery and I went into the classroom with the kids that wanted to do a craft. I decided to make a small poster that said Happy 50^th Anniversary. After outlining the letters I let the two oldest kid’s color them in however they wanted and let the other children draw pictures or write what they wanted on the rest of the poster. All of the children that were participating in the coloring were girls. The oldest girl was named Lizzie and her little brother Connor was only three and kept running from the nursery into the classroom because he was nervous and scared of the other children in the daycare. He is not a very confident little boy and constantly wanted his sister to play with him. I asked if he wanted to color and held him on my lap as he scribbled with a crayon. His fine motor skills had not developed yet so he was mostly pressing very hard with the crayon and dragging it across his paper. The other children were worried about him ruining their poster so I gave Connor his own paper to draw on. I then got a small sheet of bible story stickers and let him try to pull the stickers off. I mostly let him do it on his own but when I noticed that he was struggling I stepped in. The other children’s fine motor skills such as holding a pencil were becoming more developed and you could tell that ten year old Lizzie had better control of her pencil than 7 year old Hayden. The difference is obvious when you look over all the age groups. Small movements such as coloring in the lines are easier for the older kids who have motor skills that are more developed (Burroughs lecture, 2012).

Looking over the ages and the development of the different children you can see different stages they are in. The older kids have more of a vocabulary and can speak in more complete sentences while Connor speaks with only words to present a whole thought. Connor is at a pre-operational stage. This stage is where kids begin to represent objects by images, words, and drawings. There are a few girls and boys at the next stage of Piaget’s Theory of Cognition. This stage is the Concrete Operations where children like Lizzie and Hayden are making appropriate uses of logic. This is the point where egocentrism begins to disappear (Berger,2010). When looking at Erickson’s Stages you can see where Connor is at the end of Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt. Connor’s insecurity and the way he holds onto his sister shows that he doesn’t have a great sense of autonomy and doesn’t like to handle situations alone. Hayden and Lizzie are at the stage of Industry vs. Inferiority where they are more aware of themselves as individuals and know more about what is wrong and right (Berger, 2010). In the nursery the youngest is ShyAnne and she is in the stage of Trust vs. Mistrust. In this stage consistency in her care is necessary for her to develop trust for her parents and they need to regularly fulfill her basic needs (Burroughs lecture, 2012)

     As the night went on most kids traveled back and forth from room to room. Some of the younger ones needed help in the bathroom and when looking back on the different kids you can see different the different parenting styles. Jaclyn’s parents are very permissive and at almost six years old she acts younger than her age since they have no expectations for maturity and she has no control on her own actions. She throws fits and cries when games don’t go her way. Connor and Lizzie’s parents are more authoritarian. The children are obedient and well behaved but I never see Lizzie very happy. The most authoritative parents are Wyatt and Trey’s parents. They have and enforce their rules but the children have room to make mistakes and are guided or corrected when they are needed.

     You can see the different styles of parenting be displayed as the children play throughout the night. My young cousins are very rough and tumble and I know that is how they are raised. They play a lot of shooting and hunting games and at 5, 7, and 10 they are quite the handful. Bridger is the youngest and he and Tristan have been hunting with their dad several times. They are all state wrestling champions and it’s almost impossible to pull them apart from each other. I tried last Thanksgiving and I collided with Bridger’s hard head and chipped a tooth. Most of the other kids stay away from them because of their rough play. Trey plays with legos and Wyatt and Connor play with a ball. Some of the young girls play house and talk to the dolls like a mother would talk to her baby. This kind of play helps them with their social skills and lets them practice their control over their emotions (Berger 2010).

     As I interact with the different kids I talk softer with the younger children and separate them if they can’t get along. With the older children I do not use a baby voice but treat them as if they are older. When handling my cousins I use a pretty stern voice to get their attention because I know how they play and I do not need them hurting someone else’s child.

    The night goes smoothly for the most part. Wyatt got tired and frustrated and we decided to return him to his mother before he became too distraught. Lizzie and Hayden helped me clean up the art supplies and I let a few of the children take the poster to my grandpa. I think over the course of the night it was interesting to use what I read in the book to look at the different stages of the children. I could see how the younger children displayed egocentrism and the different ways the children acted depending on their parenting. I know most of the parents so I can confirm how the different parents act with their children.  Overall it was a fun experience but very tiring so I was glad that the next morning at Sunday service there would be fewer children to watch.