Journal

Date: 10/17/2010

Journal Entry # 1 For my project I have not started my actual volunteering at Creative Care Child Care Center yet. Although, I have spent some time on this project through preparation. I have prepared lesson plans for about two weeks worth of teaching. I have prepared different activities for the kids to do in order to help them learn this new language. These activities include coloring activities, games, vocabulary based activities, and I even found online videos. I prepared these activities hoping that they would be fun and beneficial to the children at the daycare. I am going to begin utilizing these lesson plans and materials when I begin my hands on volunteering at the day care in the beginning of November. I am very excited to see how my lesson plans play out and if the things I have created will be effective. I hope that the children will enjoy the things that I have spent all of this time making which was a total of four hours. I am looking forward to beginning my volunteer process at the daycare in a few weeks.I do not really plan on creating more lesson plans until I see how the ones I have made already work out.

Date: November 4, 2010

Journal Entry # 2 It seems as if my hard preparation for teaching the children at the daycare has paid off. I got to teach my lesson plan for the first time at Creative Care Child Care Tuesday November 2, 2010. I believe that my plans turned out to be pretty successful. The students seemed to really enjoy my lesson. Due to the fact it was my first day teaching in the class I chose to not teach anything to difficult. I decided to do a lesson on colors for the day. I made a few different activities for the students to do to try and help them to grasp this new vocabulary. It seemed as if most of the students were truly getting to understand what I was trying to teach them. Although, there were a few kids whom did not really understand what was going on at all. I am hoping that next time I go back I can get everyone’s attention and hopefully everyone enjoys my lesson that I teach. I think that if there were anything that I should change for the next lesson I teach I should make my lesson somewhat rewarding to the children, because it was not easy to get the children to participate.

Date: November 20, 2010

Journal Entry # 3

I have spent a total of 14 hours over the past two weeks volunteering at Creative Care Child Care Center. I have been enjoying my time that I have been spending there. I have been teaching children basic things about Spanish so far such as colors, numbers, and letters. I think that I have been teaching them in a fun yet beneficial way. I hope that all of the students have enjoyed everything we have done so far. They have become better at cooperating and participating in my activities as the weeks go on. I found that if I involve "prizes" or stickers that children seem to participate more. At night I have been just preparing the lessons for the days of the week that I am voulunteering. I spend time at night planning, copying, and having my little brother be the "guinea pig" for my activities.

Journal Entry 4 Date 12/21/2010: