Fitness Fun! – Yoga Lessons at Kawana Elementary School

Sally McLeod, AmeriCorps Mentor at Kawana Elementary
 

3rd Graders doing Yoga at Kawana Elementary

As a mentor and specialist at Kawana Elementary, it’s not always easy coming up with fun and innovative lesson plans. In my search for something fun and unique, I decided to take a look at previous specialist lesson plans from past years. In my search I came upon something truly inspiring; yoga for kids!

I thought yoga would be a great activity to do with the third grade! I would introduce an alternative way of exercising and keeping healthy, which a lot of the kids had never been exposed to. Some aspects that I included in my lesson were different breathing techniques, yoga postures, and other calming affects.

At the beginning of our week, I introduced the concept of yoga. I discussed what it is, its origin, and why it is useful. We then proceeded to go into our first breathing exercise. These breathing exercises were a great opener into our lesson. All of the students were asked to close their eyes and relax while given a calming visual to imagine themselves in. This really slowed up the pace and allowed students to instill a state of peace within themselves as well as a oneness with what they were imagining.

After our breathing exercises, we moved into the different yoga positions. While moving into different positions it was important for the students to understand what each position meant, so that they were able to embody all of the qualities themselves. Some poses students were asked to embody were warrior, tree, and mountain. Characteristics of these poses included strength, confidence, trust, as well as other great characteristics to promote good self-esteem and awareness.

At the end of our week, I was truly blown away at how much the students had taken from this lesson. I really felt that they were in tune and more aware of their surroundings and each other. Yoga seemed to have a real breakthrough upon these kids! They took the instructions I had given them whole heartedly and I couldn’t have asked for more!

AmeriCorps Makes a Difference on Global Youth Service Day!

Katie Watson, AmeriCorps Team Leader

On April 16, 2011 CalSERVES spent the afternoon cleaning creeks throughout southwest Santa Rosa. The children, families and communities (and wildlife) we serve on a daily basis deserve to have the cleanest creeks possible to play and explore in.

Amanda Houlemard discovers a toy sword in Todd Creek!

The Taylor Mountain crew after all their hard work!

Meadow View found a piece of a car frame in Colgan creek. 

Thank you for getting it out!

The Meadow View team moving their many trash bags to a safe place.

82 CalSERVES AmeriCorps members were in attendance and tackled Roseland Creek, Colgan Creek and Todd Creek around Stony Point Road, Hearn Avenue, Petaluma Hill Road, Todd Road and Santa Rosa Avenue.

Charlie Ruda with a very pretty balloon, one that doesn't belong in a creek. In the garbage bag it goes.

The Roseland team after all their good work.

Tyler Rockey using all his strength to pull a shopping cart out.

The Sheppard team found not one, but two shopping carts. Wow!

CalSERVES participated in this event in accordance with Global Youth Service Day and partnered with the City of Santa Rosa. Global Youth Service Day is an annual campaign that celebrates and mobilizes the millions of children and youth who improve their communities each day of the year through service and service-learning.

Hannah Kooistra from RL Stevens ankle deep in Roseland Creek getting trash out.

There's the RL crew with all their trash bags... and fun picker-upers!

Ew, Wright found SO much garbage. Thank you for getting it all out!

The Wright team are superheroes!

We picked up garbage for nearly 2 hours and there was so much more to clean! We found tires, shopping carts, backpacks, parts of cars and bikes, toys, balloons, bottles, cans, and tons of food wrappers and garbage.

Sara from Kawana finds something interesting.

The Kawana ladies are so serious about creek cleaning!

The Bellevue boys getting into dangerous waters, the community is worth it though.

Bellevue sure found some icky stuff, thank you for your hard work!

We had a blast cleaning the creek and can't wait to do it again, it is so important that we keep our community clean for our students and their families!

The 3rd and 4th Grade Take on The Redwoods!

Gabby O'Neill, AmeriCorps VIP at Wright Elementary

On March 30th, Wright Charter’s 3rd and 4th grade students, of the After School Program, went to Armstrong Redwood National Forest. Classes were divided into groups and led by seasoned docents along the Pioneer Trail. During the hike, students learned the importance of Redwood Trees, their life cycle, famous people who were a large part purchasing the land and the importance of the preservation of the Redwoods.

The highlight of the hike was when students found a 3” Banana Slug. It was hard to tear students away from the yellow and black colored wonder, but once they were told of the snack that lay ahead, they decided to finish the hike.

It was a beautiful day for a trip to the Redwoods and a great way to experience a science lesson outside of the classroom.

Reclaiming the Kawana Garden

Katherine Brooks, Supervising Teacher at Kawana Elementary

Since November, the CalSERVES crew at Kawana Elementary School have been working hard to get their school garden back into shape. Luckily, we have many enthusiastic supporters: students, parents, school staff, and other community members that all want to see the garden in a better state and used more often.

Rebecca Leung, Garden Club Organizer

“At Kawana Elementary School, we strive to offer our students as many resources as possible. However, we have one resource that is being seriously underutilized: our school garden. With 8,000 square feet, the garden is a sizable lot and needs a lot of maintenance and love.” – Rebecca Leung

Rebecca Leung, a full-time mentor and the leader in our movement to reclaim the Kawana Garden, has worked tirelessly to organize a student Garden Club, care for seedlings, and decorate our garden. She has even contacted businesses for donations and organized two Community Garden Days.

In February, the community gathered to organize the garden shed, prune trees, remove dilapidated benches, weed garden beds and cut LOTS of blackberry vines. Parents and students also planted many seeds that are growing now inside pots in our classrooms.

5th grade student Temo says about the first garden day “It was fun cleaning up because it helps our community. My favorite part was pulling all the weeds.”

Temo’s sister and mother also attended the first Community Garden Clean-Up and are excited to participate in the next one that the mentors put on.

Students working hard in the garden - Adrian (2nd) Isai and Temo (5th)

On April 2nd, Kawana’s Garden Club will have a Garden Day once again, and this time, we will be able to plant edible foods, flowers, and herbs in the prepared garden beds. We will also paint over any graffiti on the benches, and continue to remove weeds that don’t belong there. So join us April 2nd from 10 am - 1 pm and be a part of or movement to reclaim the Kawana garden, and check out more photos of our garden events on Flikr!

We look forward to making Kawana’s garden beautiful, and having fun while doing it!

Volunteering with CalSERVES at Kawana Elementary School

Christine Mendoza, CalSERVES Volunteer at Kawana Elementary

Christine Mendoza, CalSERVES Volunteer, tutors Luis, a 5th Grade student at Kawana Elementary School.

I went into volunteering at CalServes with the belief that this was going to be a short-term work-like relationship with the organization. The main reason I chose to volunteer at CalServes was primarily to gain experience for future resumes and applications for graduate schools. Now I find myself investing more time volunteering than at my part-time job and as many people point out, I don’t even get paid to do this! I guess that’s what helps me realize my time volunteering is so well spent. CalSERVES provided me with an inside look of the state of California’s public school system that I have never experienced.

I have never felt so privileged until I began tutoring and helping out the children in the program. When I go to volunteer at Kawana Elementary, I don’t wonder why I don’t do this for money because I’ve never felt like going in was a job. It’s truly a pleasure to work with a team so dedicated to making a positive influence in the lives of children.

VIP and Volunteers make a Big Impact in San Luis Obispo County

Wendy Lewis, the Associate Executive Director of the Food Bank Coalition

The AmeriCorps VIP program has definitely proven not only beneficial, but necessary for the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County. Spread between two warehouses, the Food Bank only comprises of 23 paid employees, otherwise we gratefully rely on our pool of 400+ volunteers!

Our VIP fellows Stephanie Lossinsky and Megan Chicoine both handle our large database of volunteers, as they work with the volunteers and orchestrate opportunities for those who want to participate in the community. It is so important to nurture and establish positive, fun relations with the generous people who want to help the county, and Stephanie and Megan surely do that with great verve, leadership, and administration.

One of the core volunteer groups they look forward to working with is the vivacious and always entertaining 8th grade girls with Community Giving Back, which is a service-oriented program for youth that facilitates opportunities to attend camps and various educational programs. The 8th graders have been dubbed “The Fridays” since almost every Friday, between 4 and 7 girls join forces and tackle various tasks at the Food Bank warehouse in Paso Robles. Stephanie and Megan always look forward to when the girls come to the Food Bank because the Fridays complete the occasional dirty work—for instance, bagging onions for the Saturday distribution (sometimes there are a few grimy ones!)—with loads of laughter and cheery attitudes! They make sure that the Fridays know exactly how and who in SLO County they are helping.

It was really exciting during our "Have a Heart Food Drive" at Food 4 Less in February because the girls very excitingly gathered food from giving customers and even got to take turns dressing up as the amazing Food Bank mascot Sandie the Sandwich! Community Giving Back creator Kim Austin truly appreciates the relationship between the VIP Fellows Stephanie and Megan and the Fridays. All of them understand the value of service and enjoy the process of providing for the community.

Cesar Chavez Day 2011

Frances Hardie, CalSERVES AmeriCorps VIP Leader 

Community Members receive fresh produce at the Health Fair.

 Spring means just one thing at CalSERVES: Cesar Chavez Day! Our annual health fair at Roseland Elementary is the largest event we hold each year; it requires an enormous amount of effort from all staff, AmeriCorps members, and volunteers. Fortunately, we had tons of great support from our long-term volunteers, former members, and new volunteers!

Brittany and Phil, two previous members, volunteered their services and pick-up truck to help us move an enormous mountain of donated clothing from the office. Our VIPs collected more clothing than we ever could have imagined receiving, and we had no idea how to get it all to Roseland! Fortunately, our great alumni came through in a pinch.

Kids learn bike safety at the Bike Rodeo.

On the day of the fair, we had 15 volunteers helping with everything from the bike rodeo to the farmers market to the clothing drive. Also, our VIPs recruited four stylists to provide free haircuts – over 75 people got their hair cut at Cesar Chavez Day. And, last but not least, Gabby O’Neill from Wright brought a magician to volunteer in the kids’ area and graciously submitted to being hypnotized every hour!

After the fair, everyone was exhausted from a long day of work, but we still had to pack up all of the equipment. Two eighth graders from Wright jumped in and ran around breaking down and moving tables and chairs until everything was packed. Even our students like to volunteer!

Thank you to all of our VIPs and their great recruiting efforts for making Cesar Chavez 2011 such a success.