Activities: 10-year olds and high school students
 

Okay, sometime in the next few days I'm going to be trying to coordinate an activity between a group of highschool teens and some 10-year old orphans. I haven't the faintest clue what kind of activity to involve them in.

I don't know what 10-year old girls are interested in, except maybe 13-year old boys.

But I have a background in computers. I'm thinking maybe I can take some spare parts and show them all how to build a computer and play around with drawing programs or photo editing or something "hands on". Anything to make it not a lecture.

Somehow, I'm not all that excited about the computer idea though. Originally I wanted to take the kids on a field trip to the Huntington Garden, a terrific public garden museum featuring very exotic plants in all varieties. I was going to arrange a "Scavenger hunt" to find plants with different qualities to win prizes. I figured it would be a good excercize for the high-school teens to lead small groups of younger children.

But those plans fell through because the orphanage doesn't want me to take the children off the grounds until we have a successful event on-site.

My ultimate goal is to get community service hours for these high-school kids, and to develop a working relationship with the orphanage for similiar events.


Does anyone have any ideas on how I can make this more fun or exciting or "hands on" or maybe some alternate activity ideas? I'm really dissapointed about now being able to do the garden thing, and I'm afraid my computer idea may not involve the high schoolers too much or may not properly get everyone involved (since I won't be able to get enough spare parts on short notice to build more than 1 or 2 computers).

How about arts and crafts? Would you know any artsy people?

A good idea for a first meeting, depending on the group size, would be to do some sort of team building type activities. Have the high schoolers act as facilitators while the 10 yr olds run through the events. This age group are generally very receptive to this activity. And it gets them working together, doing something, and is a great icebreaker.

It would require that you meet with the high schoolers prior to the event and "train" them on how to properly facilitate teambuilding activities. Make sure to stress the points of guiding to a proper outcome, giving hints when frustration is occuring, inclusion of every member of the group, and the benefit of debriefing the activity to enforce points learned.

Depending on the number of participants you could expect this to last anywhere from an hour to as long as you want provided you had enough stations set up.

You can google for quite a few team building activities, but here are a few of my favorites, from 13 years of running a youth camp that require very little in the way of materials, and kids tend to enjoy:

Name Catch -- Have the group stand in a large circle, begin by having each person introduce themselves so that everyone knows each persons name. Toss a ball or other object into the circle and call a persons name out as you throw it to them (i like to use a roll of toilet paper because its added streamers add effect). That person has to pick someone else and throw the ball to a new person calling them out by name. This continues until the ball goes to each person and back to the starter. Continue this with each person throwing the ball to the same person they did before, calling out his or her name each time they throw it. Stop the activity occasionally and ask if anyone thinks they can go around the entire circle naming everyone there correctly. Spice it up a bit by starting multiple balls so that you have 4 or 5 going around.

Nukes in the night -- get a coffee can, fill with water, get a 5 gallon bucket, place 10' away from teh coffee can. Get a tire intertube and cut a piece of rubber so you have a large "rubber band" -- double it over if necessary so that it stretches to go around the coffee can. Tie 5' pieces of rope to the rubber band -- about 7 or so pieces, so that when all pulled taught the rubber band stretches out. Tear up a bed sheet to make blindfolds. The objective is to stretch the rubber band around the can full of water, without touching the can, or the water, lift up the can, carry it to the 5g bucket and then empty the water without spilling any of the "neuclear waste" It takes quite a bit of team work to make this happen. Once they successfully have done it, discuss what went well and what didn't. The discussion should focus around having a single person lead what the others do instead of everyone trying to do their own thing. Have them pick a leader, who gets to stay unblind folded and blindfold the rest, this leader now has to explain without touching the apparatus to guide the group to execute the same procedure as before.

Team on a tarp -- Get a large camping tarp. lay it out on the ground and have the participants step onto it. Then fold the tarp in half and have them all get on it again. Repeat and see how many "folds" the team can get while still getting their entire team on the tarp. Debrief talking about what worked, what didn't, how to have a plan for getting people on, looking at strenghts and weeknesses etc.

Catterpiller Crawl -- get 2 8' 2x6 boards, drill holes and cut rope to make "foot holds" every 2 feet or so on the 2x6. The team gets on the skiis, strapping in, and has to navigate a course that can involve some turns etc. Talk about how having a single person calling when to lift one foot and slide forward can help bring order to the chaotic situation.

Wind in the Willows -- This is a work up to trust falls, Have 1 participant stand in the center of all other participants with arms folded. The circle holds their hands up in front of them. Blind fold the person in the center (the willow) and have them stand perfectly straight and gently lean towards the outside circle (the wind). Start with a very tight circle and slowly back up so that the person in the center is gently swaying farther and farther each time. Change up people in the center and discuss trust issues and how it felt not knowing if someone would stop them from falling or not.

human ladder -- get about 6 1-1.5" wodden dowels, (old closet rods make a good substitute) These should be about 3' in length. Participants stand in 2 lines facing each other. Each holding a dowel at waist height with one person on each end of the dowel. One person climbs the dowel as a horizontal ladder, and keeps moving across it. As they clear the back of the ladder, that "rung" moves to the front of the line and extends the ladder even further. You can make a course for them to crawl through, or add a variety by having some people hold dowels higher and lower than others making hills and valleys to traverse.

Those are some very good and detailed activities you've outlined, Anexkahn.
I might have to try some with my nieces and/or "friends'" little sisters.

Thank you to everyone who helped me with this project. I was so lost and overwhelmed when this project started, but thanks to all my friends and everyone who sent me suggestions, inspiration, and advice, the project was a success. There's nothing like a surplus of creative ideas to boost one's confidence for an event like this. We helped out some children, had a lot of fun, and provided an educational experience for both my teenage volunteers and the children at the orphanage.

The theme of the evening was "Visualizing Science & Technology" and involved the children breaking into small teams led by my teenage volunteers. Each group was given a question to answer, like "What don't you know about but would like to learn?" or "What do you think is the most significant technology today?" or "What do you see your lifestyle being like 10 years from now?" In response to these questions, the children cut out pictures from magazines and made storyboard collages on construction paper with magazines donated by the PCC natural science department.

Afterward, I gave a 35 minute interactive lecture on some of the more contraversial technologies that have been developed by various companies, that have yet to hit the market. The children and I talked about these technologies to verbally paint a picture of life 10 years from now and the orphans got in an interesting debate with eachother over the ethics and privacy issues of some of these technologies.

For the final component, I talked a little bit about the open software market and showed them Edubuntu, a distribution of Linux made for schools. They all got to play very briefly with Edubuntu on an old P3 computer we brought, and then we donated the computer to the orphanage when we were done with the presentation. The computer is going to go in there library.

All of the children had a lot of fun and had some very insightful discussions.

The kids loved it and they want me to have another similiar event soon. The orphanage has invited us back if we ever want to go back. Some of the teenage volunteers also want to be involved in any follow-up events we hold there.

Thank you so much.


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One other note that I find interesting:

Prior to giving the presentation, I made a decision regarding this event. Basically, I refused to "dumb it down". The questions were kind of complex for 10 year olds, the topics being discussed pretty heavy, and the moral issues really direct and contraversial.

And for the most part, the children followed along with the discussion and had excellent insights and comments. There were times when we had to back up and re-discuss ideas, but even that went along smoothly because at leas they asked. Altogether, it was everything I could hope to find in a college-level discussion and I reveled in it. :)

There there was this funny interuption early on in the introductions:

Child: (raises her hand)
Me: "Yes?"
Child: "You use big words."
Me: "I'm glad you noticed."

The point is that despite my commitment not to dumb things down in every way and to treat these kids as I would college students, they really followed along and were enaged in the discussions and projects at every stage. It helped that the creative storyboard excersize had them already talking about some of this stuff before the official discussion even began since they were cutting from science and technology magazines.

I was very pleased. Everyone had such a good time.

:thumbsup: