Recently I have taken on the new responsibility of assisting my beautiful wife with a project dear to her heart. She has been a facilitator for a youth group called Earth Scouts for the past four years now; recently her co-facilitator has stepped down, allowing me the opportunity to step up, and I am very excited to do so. Earth Scouts encourages boys and girls ages 3 to 103 years to become responsible global citizens empowered with the ability to make a difference in their local communities and throughout the world. Through education, activities, and service, our scouts promote
The Earth Charter vision of a caring, sustainable and peaceful world.
We’ve got a very exciting year ahead of us. We’ll be focusing on the principle of participatory democracy, which is one of five Earth Scout principles. We’re just in the early stages of planning as a group, but we’ve already begun developing our group cooperation skills and the very challenging skill of consensus decision making (which is not easy, by any means, but well worth the effort).
Also, this year, we’ve just launched the new web site for our Earth Scouts group. This provides both an outward web presence for the group, but also a secure extranet for members to communicate and disseminate important information with one another. We believe that this can work well to further improve our effectiveness as a group.
By our next meeting, we’re hoping to decide as a group where we will be concentrating our efforts for the next six months or so. The idea is to work toward positive social change in an area of concern that we all share as a group. While doing this, we’ll be developing skills in the following six areas:
- Consensus Building—working together to make decisions where there are no losers and everyone’s voice is heard and respected in the decision making process.
- Cooperation—working together effectively to achieve a shared goal.
- Courage and Leadership—doing what you believe is right even when you are nervous or scared and helping others do that too.
- Power of Voice and Action—using our words and actions to effect change in the world.
- Civic Engagement—participating fully as an active citizen within our communities and our society.
- Advocacy—working publicly and effectively in support of yourself, important causes, and the rights of others.
I’m really excited to be a bigger part of all this. It’s so very cool and encouraging to see young people getting jazzed about getting really involved in their communities and working on issues that matter most to them–and to others in our world.
Tags: earth scouts · service-learning · social responsibility
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, this fall has been a busy one so far with many activities and running around. One of the activities that Aidan has been participating in is a drop-in art class. Last week seemed an especially busy one and the thought of leaving the house by 9am and missing out on spending time with Mike that morning just to get to an art class was really not sitting well with me. So, Aidan and I decided to skip the class, stay home, hang out with Mike, and then when Mike left for work we took time to do our own art projects together. What a blast we had together! We spent almost two hours painting, drawing, reading about famous artists (from
Discovering Great Artists), and just having fun. The next day Aidan wanted to do more art so we found a great resource online (calledÂ
Art Projects for Kids) and dove into more art projects exploring watercolors and pastels, and trying our hand at copying the greats like Van Gogh, Miro, Klee, and Mondrian.
Aidan loves art and he loves to explore his creative side with all types of art. And I love seeing him creating and exploring. I, too, love art (looking at it, appreciating it, etc.). However, I don’t consider myself creative at all when it comes to making this type of art. I joke that I can’t make myself deviate from the example that I’m looking at–something in me just makes me want to replicate what I see without really putting my own touches on it. I have such a difficult time letting go and just being free with painting or drawing. But, despite my shortcomings with this, I love trying my hand at this type of art. It makes it even more enjoyable when Aidan and I can do this together–sharing, learning, laughing, and creating. Here are photos of some of our recent artwork:
Tags: art · books · family fun · learning · photos
This past month seems to have gone by in a blur for me. Part of this blur in due to Aidan’s decision to try a bunch of new activities this fall. So, right now almost every day is booked with something–from gymnastics to robotics and everything in between!
In addition to the variety of classes and clubs, we have also managed to go on a few recent tours. One was at the Romeoville National Weather Station. We all got a look at some of the tools of the trade, along with the computers that they use to track storms. We also learned about what the job of a meteorologist is all about and what it takes to become one.
The other was a tour with an engineering scientist at Fermi Lab where we got to learn about and see the Tevatron accelerator, which has been in use for 26 years. While some of the material was presented in a overly scientific manner, it still was an interesting tour/talk. It’s also pretty cool because we got to see this accelerator before it shuts down (shut down is scheduled at the end of this month).
Tags: learning · photos · physics · science · technology · tours
!["Graduation" Photo I](http://writing101.net/wp/wp-content/gallery/2008-05-16-graduation-play/dsc02052.jpg ""Graduation" Photo I")
