The YMCA Center for Asset Development has made available a new resource entitled, Seasons of Service: Engaging Youth in Service-Learning Throughout the Year curriculum. It has been nominated for a 2012 National Service Impact Award.
This offers a 3-in-1 curriculum package to engage and equip youth as change agents in the community. With step-by-step guidance, youth-serving agencies and schools can easily incorporate this curriculum into their programs and put it into the hands of youth for them to lead service-learning experiences. Click here to download the FREE curriculum.
Three distinct curriculums are included:
Change Your World offers 12-sessions to engage youth in service-learning and intentionally build their leadership skills to solve social problems. It’s an experiential look at discovering individual strengths, exploring community needs, and planning community projects to help youth change their world.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: A Day On, Not A Day Off includes outlines for three half-day experiences that help youth engage in activism as they explore service, equity, leadership, and justice through advocacy.
Service Sampler: Finding Your Place to Serve offers outlines for eleven 3-4 hour service-learning experiences across a broad exploration of community issues that prompts youth to find “their” issue and passion.
Please take a minute to vote, so we can build more awareness of this free curriculum! (Click on this link to cast your vote for the curriculum before May 15 at 5pm!)
The story, C.R. Mudgeon, by Leslie Muir is a fun story about a sensible hedgehog who likes to know just what to expect. He is uncomfortable with surprises or excitement that changes anything in his predictable life. When a noisy new neighbor, Paprika the squirrel moves in, C.R. is very uncomfortable with how animated Paprika is, and her cooking smells so different from what he is used to – it makes him sneeze.
C.R.Mudgeon learns important skills from this new neighbor, and discovers a friend in the process.
The joyful illustrations by Julian Hector help tell the story and teach valuable lessons in the process.
As a counselor, and look forward to reading this book to students who are shy and nervous about new things. The book is designed fro kids ages 4-8.
The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards singled out America’s most outstanding youth volunteers to reward their good work and hold them up as examples for all of us — kids and adults alike.
Established in 1995, The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards represents the United States’ largest youth recognition program based solely on volunteer service. My daughter won the state competition a few years ago and the experience is one she’ll never forget. During our stay in Washington DC, she met Senator Russ Feingold at the Capitol, and Condoleeza Rice at a banquet in the Smithsonian!
This year’s 102 State Honorees — one middle-level and one high school student in each state and the District of Columbia — each will receive $1,000, an engraved silver medallion and an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., May 5-8 for several days of recognition events. Another 234 students were named Distinguished Finalists and will receive engraved bronze medallions at local ceremonies.
These young volunteers have helped communities at home and abroad with remarkable activities and service. To read more about this year’s honorees, please visit the Prudential Spirit of Community site.
And if you’d like to watch the live Webcast of the national award recognition, please log in here.
Also, this weekend is Global Youth Service Day (April 20-22, 2012). Efforts across the globe are getting kids involved in the community through service. Check out the great things youth are doing here.
Do you have a honey lover in your house? Or maybe a child that already understands the important value bees have in your ecosystem?
UnBEElievables is a collection of honeybee poems and paintings by Douglas Florian. This colorful and informative book offers a unique and interesting blend of poetry, artwork and scientific explanations about the life and purpose of honeybees. On each pair of pages, the author writes a detailed description of some aspect of honeybee anatomy, life cycle, social organization, or participation in nature, along with a poetic description of that science, and a painting illustrating it as well.
This fun, colorful and informative book is a must-have for any nature-lover on your gift-giving list. And the multi-disciplinary approach makes it a perfect pick for homeschoolers and classrooms as well. It’s recommended for ages 5 and up.
For spring break this year, my family visited Cabo San Lucas. Our first excursion was to the rugged and hilly desert to go ziplining.
We had planned for the trip ahead of time, by purchasing vouchers through Los Cabos Guide, which saved us 35% of the $380 bill (four of us ziplined.) And we arranged the date our Wild Canyon shuttle van would pick us up at our resort.
It was incredible! We did the 9:00 tour, so it probably wasn’t as hot as it got in the afternoon. The crew helped us get our harnesses and helmets on, and gave a brief training. Then we took the first of eight ziplines, sometimes traveling solo, and sometimes as doubles or even all four of us at once!
There was quite a bit of hiking in between the ziplines, but the crew took good care of us, supplied bottled water and gave us tips as we’d connect to the next zipline. The wind picked up later in the tour, and it became more difficult to keep straight in the zipline, which is important in order to keep the speed necessary to make it all the way to the next landing. But we all made it, every time – only landing a couple feet short once or twice.
They don’t allow photography once you’re in the canyon, so you rely on the crew photographer to take great shots. At $38 per people, the photo disc is expensive, but the photos are great!
Ziplining is great, we loved Wild Canyon, and Los Cabos Guide vouchers are a no-brainer. We would have purchased vouchers for other restaurants and excursions if we planned to use them.
