Today marks day 4 of working on the farm! As sad as it is, we are nearing our endpoint for the semester. This summer semester is an 8 week program and we are on our 5th week. For those of you who have joined me, I’ll enlighten you a bit. Tuskegee University facilitates a community garden on campus for local kids. Each week the children come up to Tuskegee University and work in their garden under the supervision of Tuskegee’s social work interns and their field director (aka internship teacher).
Do you wonder why a group of children comes up to Tuskegee University each week to pick weeds and grow strawberries? Well, it has been empirically proven that community gardens work as a determent of maladaptive behavior in children and young adults. Children are far less likely to be involved in negative and harmful activities when they participate in community projects such as this one.
So today marks the 4th week of working with the kids. It’s a bittersweet moment. We have seemingly a lot of time left, but also not that much time at all. We will soon start telling the kids that the program will end soon and that there will be one next semester. To be honest, I feel as though we have not done much. I believe, however, that we have. We have made a positive influence in these children’s lives and have possibly sown seeds into their lives that they will never forget. I know many of the children by name and have spent time with a few of them. I have learned that I enjoy their company and that they enjoy ours.
But anyway, I’m skipping ahead. Let’s talk about what we did today. Today we planned a coloring and writing activity that we will most likely use next Wednesday. We walked down to the raised flowerbeds and saw that the sunflowers had grown even more! They were beautiful! The box that my little partner and I did looked amazing, as well as everyone else’s. Last week we had little seedlings, while this week, we have even bigger seedlings!
Here are some pictures of our sunflowers and the watering experience that we had (these aren't the ones that my little partner and I planted. We watered them a bit hard and they bent over a bit- not very picture friendly!):
After we did that, we went up to the Veterinary computer lab and worked on computers with the kids for a moment. The usual lecturer was not there today, but the children had other assignments on which to work as well. The children who come and work with us on Wednesdays are a part of another community organization that meets every day. Each activity that the children work on or learn about, they write it in their composition notebook and make it into a huge PowerPoint at the end of the summer. Today the children each worked on their own PowerPoint presentations. After working on the presentations for about 25 minutes, the two young ladies with which I was working began to play online games. I hardly knew that there were cooking games for young girls online! Believe it or not, I’m excited to say that I learned how to make truffles and rainbow cupcakes today. This is all from a child’s interactive game online.
Today you can possibly call uneventful, but in all reality it was just the opposite. A lot went on today- the children learned, exhibited critical thinking skills and exhibited problem-solving skills. I love that the children who come to program are actually learning. I pray and believe that this will continue for the next weeks to come.
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