Location: House Of The Good Shepherd
Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2015; 6:30-7:45 pm
I was rushing to get there on an unusually cold day, meaning
that we wouldn’t be going outside today.
I saw that some of the regulars like Wesley and Marc were already here
and we were soon joined by Marvin as well.
Emily, who was our Volunteer leader, took us downstairs where the kids had
already assembled and I recognized most of them from when I was here last time. Emily called everyone together for
introductions and as an ice breaker; we had to say what our favorite thing
about summer was. Based on my
experience, I knew that this group of kids is always enthusiastic to play along
with this. I heard several things like “going to the beach”, “swimming”, “riding my bike”, “ice cream”
etc. One girl said that she had 4 things and that
included everything that we had just listed.
I said that I liked the warm weather and after a day like today, it was
the truth!
 |
| Our book for the evening |
Next, the kids had to pick partners and as is the norm, no
one choose me. In fact, kids preferred
to be partnered with 2 other adults or with other kids or with even with Emily
than choose me. I guess after a
lifetime, I should be prepared for rejection.
Marvin tried his best to get kids to partner with me, but to no
avail. Finally, he was able to convince
his kid girl to let me tag along. Everyone
had laid mats down on the floor and were sitting on them. However, our little girl wanted Marvin and me
to sit in kids chairs. The book we had
was called “Angelina Ballerina: The Best
Sleepover Ever”. It was about a “girl mouse” who was hosting a sleepover
with her best friend, and how she was planning for it with her mother. Our girl did not seem particularly interested
in reading, meaning that Marvin and I would be reading alternate pages. However, I noticed that while she was paying
attention to Marvin, she was doing her own thing when it was my turn.
The book was interesting, especially a page where the little
mouse is planning activities, such as having pizza, peanut butter ice cream,
pillow fight etc. We asked the girl if
she knew what the mice liked and she said cheese. I asked why, and she said because of the smell. So I asked that if I like cheese, am I a
mouse and she said “yes”! She also bought another book for us to read,
called “The Tigger Movie”, but we
were not going to get through this one during our session. Sure enough, very soon Emily put a halt to
this and we were on to games.
The girl chose a game called “Lite Brite Travel”, which consisted of a bunch of multi-colored
pins which one arranged in a grid, and there was a back-light which when turned
on would form a pattern. I personally thought
that it was an extravagant marketing ploy. Our girl asked us to take turns choosing
colors and we were putting the pins in order.
Once we had utilized all the colors, she took it to show to our staff
contact who was observing the activities.
In the meanwhile, I was looking at a game being played next to me
called, “Guess Who”, which looked
interesting. It was for 2 players with 24 characters cards in front of them and you had to guess other person’s character by asking questions and eliminating
based on the answers. It looked like a
hybrid of “Battleship” and "20 Questions". The boy, who was playing it, was looking for a
partner and so I joined him to play 2 games, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Time was up and after a couple of High-5’s with the kids we
left. I was sitting with Marvin on the
train and we discussed Chicago Cares and how they should do more by getting
their member organizations connected. I guess
the “Auxiliary Board” could be doing
this, but that would just get in the way of their so called “happy hour fundraisers”. I asked Marvin why he volunteers; I mean he
has a family. He mentioned how he had met
a kid here a long time ago. The kid was being brash and while he was
turned off initially, later he learnt that the kid was like that because he did not
want people to leave and this was a defense mechanism. That put everything in perspective and
suddenly I did not feel bad for never being picked…almost.
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