How to Earn Money Having Fun!

Let’s face it, finding a job is hard.  It’s even more difficult to find a good job that actually makes a positive difference in your life and the lives of others.  But at Children’s Choice they have a secret strategy for keeping their employees happy.  You want to know the secret?  It’s simple.

They value their employees.

It’s not just my opinion that Children’s Choice is one of the best places to work. Children’s Choice has been awarded by the Albuquerque Journal 3 years in a row for being a Top Workplace for Small Businesses in New Mexico.

Here are just some of the many reason why Children’s Choice is one of the best places to work at in New Mexico.

1. It makes a positive difference. 

CC (Children’s Choice) is a before and after-school program that offers a safe place for kids to go when they aren’t in school.  Not only is it a model of quality for after-school care, it is Nationally Accredited.   Additionally, many former CC kids have shared stories about their experiences in our program and attribute a part of their success to those experiences and their relationships with CC staff.

2. It’s all about the...

Randomly ask a CC staff person CC to finish this phrase, “It’s  about the…” and without hesitation they will shout “RELATIONSHIPS!”  This is because CC highly values the interactions between kids, staff, and families.  

CC focuses on positive and meaningful interactions.  It’s the only time during the day when adults can spend significant time with kids in a small setting, doing fun, enriching activities.  Staff are trained to pay attention to kids needs and teach positive social interactions.  These are life long skills that children and adults need to achieve success in life.

3. You feel appreciated and valued. 

At CC, staff is always highly valued.  Part-time employees get 8 paid holidays, and 9 paid holidays your second year.  Full time staff has access to health, dental and vision care, as well as a 401K with 7% matching, life insurance, and 10 days paid leave every year.

Not only that, Children’s Choice makes over 70 hours of paid training available each year.  Mike and Chelsea Ashcraft, the CEOs of Children’s Choice, travel the country to provide training at conferences and other after-school programs.  But more importantly, they train their own staff.   CC, unlike most businesses, allows staff to learn the philosophies and values directly from the founders, and if you have any questions you can ask them directly.

4. It’s a lot of FUN!

Children’s Choice is a place where play is required.   After-School should be a time when kids can be themselves, so we encourage staff to play.  Not only that, we go on fields trips, do fun activities, and have enrichment clubs.  

You can bring your passion to CC.  Staff get to make their own curriculum and bring in their interests and talents to share with the kids.  This means that if you’re into cooking, you can teach a group of kids how to cook.  If you’re into science, you can do a science project with the kids.  If you like music, you can start your own band with the kids.  A big part of the CC is the experience we create, and we always want to the experience to be FUN!

5. The company’s values align with yours. 

At the end of the day, it’s what you want that really matters.  There are a ton of jobs that you can get that won’t listen to you, or take in consideration what your needs are.  But at Children’s Choice we know the key to our success is having a staff that we value.

If you want to learn more, or want to apply to Children’s Choice go to www.childrens-choice.org.

505-296-2880

By Chris Walsh

5 Ways to Motivate Kids to Learn Math!

For most kids, math can be a total bore.  This year I taught I an after-school math class called Dramatic Math, and my goal was to make a math class that I would have loved to gone to.  Here are some ideas we came up with to make math fun and exciting.

1. Warm Up to Math!

After spending all day in class, the last things kids want to do is sit down and do some math problems. So we always start with a math warm-up exercise.  A math warm-up example:

16 Shakedown -Shake each limb starting with arms and going down to the leg sixteen times.   And count together.  Then ask what half of 16 is.  8! Perfect, now shake every limb 8 times.  Now what is half of 8?  4, of course!  Shake every limb 4 times.  Keep going to till you get down to 1!

2.  Make it a Game!

Kids love challenges, strategies, and games.   A math quiz SHOW is always going to be better than a plain math quiz.  Plus, it’s a great way for kids to interact in groups.

  

3. Keep it Physical!

Lots of people think math is just a lot of worksheets and written problems. I always like to give physical challenge to test kids bodies as well as their minds.  Examples include:

Division Exercise – Break kids in to groups of 2-6 depending on how hard you want their math to be.  Then challenge to do something ridiculous like 120 push-ups, but also let them know that they can divide 120 by the amount of people in their group.  This also works great with crunches, jumping jacks, and running.

4.  Make it Hands On

A lot of the problem with math is it very abstract and hard to understand when if you can’t see it or touch it.  That’s why we try to let kids interact with math in a tactile way such as making a lemonade stand where they have to use money to and make transactions.

 5.  Keep it Dramatic!

Our math class was called Dramatic Math because wanted to tell a story with the math.  One of the ways was having the kids come up with sketches or even movie ideas that involved math.  We did an Indiana Jones type movie trailer where kids going into a candy cave and have to solve math problems!

Dramatic Math Trailer

By Chris Walsh

Jim Dine Hearts

Jim Dine (1935), is an American Pop Artist and Abstract Espressionist who is known for his colorful and iconic painting of robes and hearts. He is considered an important figure in Neo-Dada and a forerunner of Neo-Expressionism. He is the undisputed King of Hearts. He paints, prints, draws, and sculpts them. When asked how many hearts he has made, he responded, “Millions… I have not idea but it’s mine and I use it as a template for all my emotions. It’s a landscape for everything.”

In this art class, we showed the students an example of a Jim Dine heart painting.

We asked them, “What colors were in used in the art.  How does it make you feel?”  Then we told them that we were going to do our own version of the heart picture.

Materials needed:

·      Paper

·      Crayons

·      Pencil

·      Watercolors

·      Water

·      Brushes

We first showed the students how to draw a big heart on their page with pencil.  Then we had them trace over the pencil with crayon.  Once their heart was drawn, the students then used watercolors to fill in the heart.  We had them think about the colors inside the heart, and outside and asked how they wanted them to contrast.  

Here are their heart-filled results.

Beyond Books and Beverages

We think the experiences of older kids should be special. They have unique needs and wants and deserve activities designed specifically for their age group. Their voices need to help drive the design of their own programming. Older kids should have experiences that are different than those of the younger kids.

In our Older Kids Club, they are involved a mix of service learning projects like fundraising for our local animal shelter and helping the younger kids with homework that teach a sense of community and activities that are just plain fun like making our enjoying special snacks and pet rock creations while hanging out in the Older Kids only area of our community.

This month, our Older Kids Club surveyed the younger kids in the program about books they would like to read.  We took a field trip to the local Barnes and Noble, first stopping at the bookstore café for some grown up Starbucks beverages. Then we spent some time picking out books from the younger kids’ wish list. “I really liked this book we picked out, it was called I SPY, ” said Teagan.   They were given a budget and had to experience the democratic process in action by taking a few votes to decide on which books to purchase. “I suggested Mal’s Spell Book and it has some spells in it.  I think it is good for older kids and some younger kids that can read really well,” said Kahlo.

Later this month we will continue a Sombra Older Kids Club tradition by constructing a Haunted House.  Families are invited to tour the attraction with their children during our Family Night, October 30^th. 

Lego Movie Literacy

Lego’s are fun. The Lego Movie that was released this year added even more excitement to the classic building toy. Our idea was to create a Lego class that challenged kids to practice their literacy skills by writing a story – the classic hero’s journey.

The first step was character development. We asked the kids to draw their hero and describe the character’s personality by telling us if their character was good, or bad, or both, what their character liked to do as a job or a hobby, what the character wanted to achieve, what fears or obstacles could make it difficult for the character to achieve the big goal, and what traits, strengths, and skills can help the character achieve the goal?

Then we worked on the setting: We challenged the kids to “paint a picture of the setting… using words.” Where and when will the events of the story happen? 

• Describe the place… Examples: the forest; the school; our town; or on another planet. 
• Describe the location… Examples: beside the big oak tree; on the playground, near the zoo, or by the Purple Sea of Enselor. 
• Describe the objects in the setting… Examples: mushrooms, the twirly slide, the koala bear enclosure, or the statue of the alien hero. 
• Describe the time… Examples: morning, midnight, or dusk; in the present day, past, or future. 
• Describe the weather… Examples: stormy, clear sky, muggy, hot.

We asked them to use descriptive and exciting words to describe each place. We challenged them to use great “kicked up” adjectives (hot/cold, bright/dark, dirty/clean, gloomy/cheerful, simple/elegant, colorful/faded, modern/old fashioned, luxurious/simple, threatening/tranquil).  But we also challenged them to “NOT make their adjectives DO ALL THE WORK” – instead of simply saying that the forest is gloomy – DESCRIBE what gloomy looks like, sounds like, and feels like. The dark forest was wet and a little bit cold, and the wind sounded like the trees were trembling and weeping.

Then we simply walked them through the process of telling the hero’s journey by having them come up with at least three problems or challenges that the hero would need to overcome and a creative, unexpected, or funny way of solving each problem.

Finally, we asked them to write a grand finale’. Tell the story of whether the Character wins or loses, reaches the goal or fails. Is there a moral to the story? If their character succeeds, this is a comedy; when the character fails, this is a tragedy. We challenged them not to just cut the story off, but to “wrap it up with a nice BOW.”

The kids thought about their stories as they build scenes and props with Legos, and worked on their stories at home. When they were happy with their stories, we snuck in a little technology education. We taught them to use stop-animation and green screen technology to create their own Lego Movies.

Here is a good example. As you watch, listen for character development, setting description, problems, solutions, and the grand finale’. Enjoy!

You can download the materials we gave the kids to help them at www.ashcraftafterschool.com/lovinlearnin.html

Spellin' Hopscotch

Spellin Hopscotch - Create a 35-letter (vowels and R, S, T, and N are written twice), 10-row hopscotch grid on the floor, inside or outside.  Write their spelling words or sight words for their grade level on index cards (Note – asking teachers for these lists helps build relationships and partnerships).  

Children draw a card, read it, replace it, and then hops out the word. Children can hop spell answers to any science or social studies question.  Or use numbers and hop out math problems.  

We have also used this to sneak in some social studies.  Hopsctch was developed from myths about mazes and labyrinths – you can see how the game board fits into such a story.   Some versions of hopscotch grew from religious beliefs of a human soul’s journey from Earth to Heaven.  The oldest known Hopscotch board is etched into the floor of the Forum in Rome, Italy.  The game spread throughout Europe during the rise of the Roman Empire.  Children in Britain, France, and Germany were taught the game by soldiers.  Hopscotch is now one of the most widely played games in the world.

Long Love Lists

Long Love Lists - We like to use adding tape for this fun literacy activity.  We simply put up a long strip of adding tape (to add some novelty and fun) and give the kids a topic.  Something like list everything you love (Valentine’s Day); 

everything you are scared of (Halloween); everything that you are thankful for (Thanksgiving) or everything that is WET.  They might list water, milk, orange juice, etc.  Eventually spit and pee might make the list, so be prepared.

Oreo's Don't Phase Me: Phun with Moon Phases

We started out asking the kids what they already knew existed in space. 

Then we played a game that allowed every child to tell us what they already knew about space - and wrote it on post it notes and stuck them to our Guinea Pig - I mean...happy volunteer. 

She was covered so we knew a lot of things that existed in space. One prevalent answer was the moon. We talked about each how the moon's appearance change during the month and the names of each phase, after we drew them on the board. 

Constellations: Kids Create their Own

This is a fun, literacy activity we invented by accident - born out of imagination and a constellation conversation.

We were talking about stars and the groups of stars that form patterns when viewed from Earth - constellations. We talked about the 88 different constellations listed by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy.

We talked about some of the more famous constellations like the Big Dipper and Orion.

Then we began talking about how when we look at stars we can see other patterns that may look like animals, mythological creatures, people, or inanimate objects such as a microscope or a heart.

We gave the kids some black paper and foil stars and let them create artwork based on constellations from their imaginations. To sneak in a little literacy, they all wrote a paragraph about their imagination constellations.

We decided we could kick these projects up a notch by making them GLOW! We have the kids some fluorescent markers and paints and let them do their projects under a black light. This was an instant hit.

We have learned that it is a little easier to use WHITE paper and standard highlighter markers. The florescent colors show up much better on white paper and the highlighters are easier for children to write with (and less expensive) than florescent paint.

The kids LOVE writing their own florescent messages. 

This one is GLOWING literally and figuratively – GLOWING!

Stop! Get Your Geometry On!

Afterschool Rap Videos

Creating rap videos is a great way to engage kids in meaningful and pleasurable learning. 

This is a great strategy afterschool programs can use to promote and support literacy, reinforce school-day learning, and in this case... teach important math concepts.

Anyone who knows us also knows that creating a rap video is outside of our typical "box" but that we also love to BLOW UP the box. 

The word RAP doesn't immediately come to mind when you look at either one of us. RAP means Rhythm And Poetry. 

We used a website... www.rhymezone.com to help us write the rhyme. Then our kids ran with the idea and created a great rap video. Check it out. 

Based on the Common Core State Standard in math... "Identify and describe shapes... squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, hexagons... "

Please share, like, and comment on YouTube! 

FilmCamp Facilitates FUNdamentals

Film classes and camps directly teach about technology and design and also facilitate the development of literacy skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

We have been having a blast with our film classes this year. Enjoy this great example.

Title:  The Haunted School

Description:  Students learned what makes suspense in movies.  They were then given the challenge to make a movie that would actually build suspense in the audience.  They brainstormed ideas, and made an outline of the movie.  They also wrote dialogue for all the characters. They did their own make-up and gathered props and costumes.  During production, students took turns directing and filming scenes.

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