"Learn from Yesterday, Live for Today, Hope for Tomorrow." ~Albert Einstein

It's been a long time since I've posted (sorry!).  So, here's a (hopefully) quick summary:

End of the School Year
The end of the year festivities went fairly well!  We had our traditional party day with homework (always homework), pull pinata, BINGO, and the end of the day water balloon fight.  I look forward to that part every year.  I was even so excited about it that I convinced my sister to put off moving back to Hawaii so that she could join in the fun!  She left the next day.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the water balloon fight because I was busy getting soaked.

Summer Enrichment Program 2014
The Summer Enrichment Program this year was completely run by an amazing group of interns who we called the Fab Five.  It was made up of two longtime volunteers (Ryan and Crystal), one of our interns from last summer (Jessica), a new friend from Florida who heard about us through family (Hannah), and Jelitza, our first high school graduate who just finished her first year at Berkeley!

It was so wonderful having them all here!  Jessica ran the overall program as the Coordinating Intern, so she did everything from update the training manual and train volunteers to coming up with schedules every day and coordinating the program every day.  And she was awesome at it.  She also led the Junior Leaders Workshop with Ryan for the Junior Highers during snack time every day.

The other four interns were in charge of coming up with their own curricula for workshops and then teaching them.  They each taught a reading workshop to a different age group, and then taught one other workshop every day.  Ryan taught the Reading Workshop to the Junior Highers, and then either gym games or math workshop the rest of the day.  Hannah taught the rising 4th-6th graders' Reading Workshop and then taught either fitness or garden/nutrition the rest of the day.  Crystal taught the Reading Workshop to the rising 2nd-3rd graders and computers every day.  Jelitza taught the K-1st graders' Reading Workshop and the drama workshop every day, where all the age groups were working on a production of The Princess and The Frog for our end of program Open House, which they performed for their parents and community members.

While all of this was happening, I was in East Africa on a mission trip (for almost a week and a half before and the first week of programs), and then I came back excited to see everyone at the beginning of their second week and only made it through a day and a half before coming down with a terrible case of the stomach flu and being stuck in bed for another week.  I finally came back halfway through their 3rd week of programs and had the following pictures taken throughout the rest of the program.

I didn't know what they were doing, but it deserved a picture.

snack time

Jessica giving announcements

Jelitza teaching the reading workshop

Hannah looking like a superhero.

Pablo helping him with his English.

The junior highers worked with the 2nd-3rd graders once a week.

Ryan teaching Junior Leaders

I love this since he left the program last year because it was difficult for him to sit still, and now he loves leading the little ones.

The Interns had a prize option of a water balloon fight with them after the program one day.

Brothers!

Jeff's talented wife, Meg, came to help with choreography.

Throughout the rest of the Summer program, I spent most of my work hours planning for the new school year, making changes to the After School Program based on suggestions from volunteers and kids (and things I see other groups using), and mentoring the Interns as they were working on the current program.  And shopping.  I did a lot of shopping to make sure we had enough supplies for when the Junior Highers started 2 weeks after the program ended.