Skeleton Adventure Club

When I started with my AmeriCorps position, I already had some presentations scheduled by my predecessor with various local groups who wanted to set up programs before I filled the position. It was nice having a few things planned for me, but I had one pre-scheduled thing that was starting to feel was pretty inconvenient. It was a half hour event at a library that was an hour away from the office during the evening. I was not thrilled to have this class scheduled for me. As the event came closer, I was still annoyed by the inconvenience of it mainly the short length of the event for such a long drive. Luckily, I learned that day that the event was going to be longer and it actually sounded really fun! The event was a monthly club meeting of the skeleton adventure club, a group of 4-7^thish graders who meet monthly to learn about something neat and have some sort of activity and at the end of the session they all would get a skeleton key to add to their collections. The group seems to have some pretty active learners – they want to do something to learn not just talk or read about.

My class was part of Blood, Bones, and Guts day. The first part of the event was my class, First Aid for Little People with some extra first aid procedures. The second was time where the 16 attendees could use make-up (and this nasty mixture of Vaseline, cocoa powder, red Kool-Aid powder and tissues) to make scrapes, cuts, wounds etc. I got to stay to see their creativity and help them with wraps and slings and band-aids.

It was so fun to see their creativity and excitement about making themselves look intensely injured. They made black eyes, bites from vampires, and huge puss-y wounds. It was gross. The event was so fun and so much better than I had expected. The kids were excited to learn and it was such a different atmosphere than I usually have when in a classroom.

Seeing the youth enjoy themselves while learning was very rewarding and enough to convince me that the program was worth the drive, but then two days later the women in charge of the program called my site supervisor and told her how great she thought my presentation was and how the kids really learned something that they could use in life. That feels pretty great. I’m not in this for recognition from other people, but it sure feels great to hear that others think you are successful at what you are trying to do.