After making several trips to the CPS Daycare I have definately came to the conclusion that in the future I will be working with children forsure. I love working with them and learning different things from them. With this project I am learning that patience truly is a virtue. I am a babysitter and I have been for around nine years so throughout my life I have learned that with working with children you really have to control your patience. I have also learned that some children do not respond to certain approaches by teachers such as when some one says "no," obviously children like to rebel against what they are supposed to do. It is interesting to learn different ways to which the children do follow the rules such as; just asking them to do something, or if they are not moving fast, race them. So far working in the daycare has just helped my future decisions in life and I hope it continues to do so.

Where Debot Goes.

For my groups service learning project we are setting up an informational poster and possibly some healthy snacks in the HEC. The poster will have a diagram of the human digestive system and also list the functions, common afflictions, and how to keep each of the main organs healthy. We dicided that the HEC is an ideal location because it is a health education environment that gets alot of students going through it. I have contacted the people in charge of the table there and we got the go ahead, we just have to tell them the specific times and dates that we are going to have it set up. My group should be done with the poster by the end of this weekend. Keep an eye out for us next week and stop by to check it out.

Hold your horses!

Theres not too much news about my project, I am still plugging away at making the webpage, I only have one more color specimin to find, and than my picture taking fun is over. There is one new thing that happened which is kinda a disapointment. At St. francis horse rescue, mary (the owner) was talking with the insurance company and now there is a new rule that we can't go into the pasture with the horses unless Mary is home. Well, that puts a good damper on our fun. Since its pretty hard to hang out with them when they are all out on the far end of the pasture. I see the purpose behind it though, they rather us not get hurt and sue them. Understandable.

This weekend I had to come back home for some various things and offered to help out at the farm I volunteer for down here, which is a therapy riding center (for children with disabilities) they needed people to feed the horses this weekend. So waking up near the time I go to bed on the weekends I headed over there to feed. It was nice to see how all the critters were doing. I also found my Black horse, Dimma (which means darkness in icelandic), who is an icelandic pony and is all black with no bleaching Bleaching is a problem that I was having with the horses I was finding, where they are classified as black, but they have lighter spots by their legs, face, and mane from the sun. I also have to learn how to lunge a horse before summer, when I have to ride full time (oh darn) so I tried on this little fat mini horse, Steve, ( his head reaches about my waist) ... who is about the same size around as he is tall. He did not want to humor me! We would run down the pasture ( i would take big walking strides) and then try to lunge, as soon as we got set up for lunging (which is basically having the horse do circles around you while attached by a lead rope..) he started refusing, he would just turn his body enough, and then try to kick me. He is a very bitter little horse, he tried to kick me while I was feeding him earlier. I still have the rest of the weekend to work with him, if all else fails, I can work with one of the more trained larger horses, but wheres the fun in that.

I found it funny that when I was feeding I managed to tell one of the horses to well, hold you horses... I laughed out loud.. and horse just stole the hay while I was being amused by my unintended pun.
It was dumpy weather this morning so no pictures. Will edit the ones in of the critters at the barn here in MN.

Weekly Update

This past week our group met on Tuesday and accomplished quite a bit. We sat down and were able to get a rough outline of the entire animation, along with text/narration ideas, down on paper. We were planning on meeting yesterday but due to some scheduling conflicts that did not pan out. Though from what I have been told by next week Liz was going to have some of the basic backgrounds and figures developed and with our continuous refining of the information things are becoming much more concise and effective.

Humane Society

I went to the humane society today at around 1:00 pm and volunteered for two hours. Vicki and I first went to the dog kennals to walk the dogs and let them run and play around in a larger area. We took the large, three legged Saint Bernard out because we haven't took him out for a couple of weeks and he needed some attention. I feel kind of bad for him and think he should get more attention than some of the other dogs because I have noticed that the younger and prettier dogs find a good home faster than the older scruffy ones like that Saint Bernard. We went on a short walk with him and then just took him in a room to brush and pet him. After we took him back to his kennal, we took out a very nice black dog that was really easy to walk. When a person came in and saw this beautiful dog, she asked if the dog was up for adoption, and she wanted to see it. Just because we walked by with this dog, we could have possibly found it a good home and a nice family to take care of it. We then went in the toy room to play with a few cats. The cats are really funny to watch; there were many toys around but the cats went for the paper bag instead of any of the fansy toys around them. I love voluteering at the humane society. It not only makes me feel good, but it is also helping all of the animals living there find a home and people adopting find a friendly new addition to the family.

Sturgeon Patrol

Chad Leanna and myself are scheduled to go on sturgeon patrol this wednesday night starting at 7:00 pm and will be stationed at a well known sturgeon viewing position along the river all night until 7:00 am. Our duties are to ensure the safety of the sturgeon from anglers or poachers who attempt to harm them during their run up the river to spawn. We are instructed to be at the sturgeon camp by 6:30 pm in order to receive a breifing on our jobs and locations. It should be an interesting night. I have seen sturgeon before but never in large numbers or of any size so this will be a new opportunity for Chad and I. It should make for a long night though and an extremely long day on thursday considering we will not be getting any sleep. The Sturgeon project will be providing all the tools we will need throughout the night including a cell phone to call in any suspicious activity involving the sturgeon. They also provide us with a supper apon arrival, a midnight snack if we so choose and a breakfast after we are releived at 7:00 am. We were also instructed to bring a camera, flashlight and reading materiel or something to keep us busy because they suspect that there will not be much activity in the form of poachers or tourists in the wee hours of the morning. It should be fun and i am excited.

Cellular Respiration

My group meet yesterday to plan what we will be doing on the animation. We used some references from the Internet to reword and simplify for high school students about cellular respiration. We came up with three main steps and an extra step if needed. We are only planning on using the three steps though. We also drew a few sketch's on what each slide will look like. We could not do anything on the computer yet but wrote out the outline for the script. We want to start recording the next time we meet. The next time we meet will be on Tuesday after Bio. We hope to work for a few hours on the animation and the talking. We meet this time for over an hour. The planning of what we are going to say is not the easiest due to the fact that we have to bring it down so everyone can understand what we are talking about. This project or what we have so far should help many students have a better understanding.

Sturgeon Patrol

Andy and I are both looking forward to our service learning. It is going to be a big day. After class on Wednesday we are going to pack up a cooler of soda, some lawn chairs and some flashlights and our cameras. We are going to leave Stevens Point around 4:30 PM. We will drive 60 miles to Shiocton. We then have to go to “fish camp.” Here we get a meal and they then train us on what to do, give us a sack lunch, and assign us to and area. Once we get to and area, we are stationed there until 7 AM. While here our job is to make sure nobody harasses the fish or tries to catch them. If they do we will call it in on the supplied cell phone. Then we are going to drive back and be back in time to go to lab at 9. We are going to nap a lot before going to this because it is going to be a long time to go without sleep. I think it is going to be interesting to watch the sturgeon. They are such a prehistoric fish and a large fish.

autism night at the childrens museum

last week we went to autism night at the childrens museum. I was a little unsure of what to expect as i went there as i have never been around an individual with autism. when i got there there were 2 children with autism. they were the complete opposite of each other. one was extremely hyper while the other child was calm and quiet. each one had there little niche that they would do to i guess calm and collect themselves. the quiet one would touch your face and keep to himself while the hyper one would hold things close to his face and hop around a little bit. over all i definately think that this was a learning experience and it was fun as well

CPS Daycare

Going into the classroom I never know what the next little kid is going to say to me and that always keep me smiling. Of course you get the kids that are at times a pain in the but because they are not very happy but they get happy by the end of class. Sitting and playing with the kids is a great way to start my day because I just love spending time with them. Today I met some new little girls and we danced and sang together, I would do this with my friends but I wasnt sure if I should do it in public : ) With little kids it is nice because it is like they bring out the inner child in you. The best part of the day today was the little girl that said she only gave certain people hugs and that I was one of them and I got some good hugs let me tell you : ) I love working with kids and always smiling and giggling with them.

Service-learning project

I have been working on my service learning project but I have realized it would be a lot easier to something here in Stevens Point or Plover rather than going all the way back to my hometown. The weeks are getting down there but I should have everything set-up by the end of next week. I was also thinking of doing something different than teaching children because I have already experienced that. Even though it is a good feeling to know that you had something to do with the child's education but I would like to do something different than I have done. I will know everything for sure by the end of next week and I'll keep everyone in touch of what how everything is going and what I decided to do instead.

dorm room sickness

Our project is coming along and we have a pamphlet made up. We are still working on ways to make it more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read. One thing I thought of overnight was do we have to get our posters approved for being able to be put up or are we allowed to just tape them to the walls. I know in the dorms some things are just on the walls but around campus theres things that say UWSP approved or something like that. On our pamphlet's we covered common infections and sicknesses you could get staying in a dorm becuase of the close contact and company of having a roomate. We tell how you get it, what it is, the symptoms, and how to treat it as well as the duration of the infections. As for now, thats all we've done but we plan on getting together this week and take care of a few things.

common dorm sicknesses

So far everything is going well. The members of our group are working together well and we are starting to see some good progress. Bathroom signs have started to go up and they seem to be going over well. We still need to figure out a date for an infomational and questions session but everything else is going smooth.

The significance of our work is to help educate students about some of the common sicknesses and diseases in the dorms and how to prevent them. I think this is important because keeping students healthy can only benefit there academic experience at there respected college.

Four Hoofed fun!

I have more pictures than I could imagine what to do with. Though its mainly because I have gotten distracted while at the horse rescue by either taking portraits of my friend for her mom to print out and hang on the fridge, or the sheer thrill of trying to take pictures of the horses as they run all over with spring fever, and taking pictures of that instead of my project. Everyone is still pretty filthy, even though we did go out with brushes these kids needs a hose or something!

So far I have 4 pigments on the page (Bay, Chestnut, Dapple Gray, and Roan) Though the roan is the only one in the format that I want it. Where there is a thumb of a focused point.. I am in the process of putting text on 4 more (Appaloosa, Paint, Palomino, and Silver Dapple) and than I still have to find a good picture out of my stock of oh.. 500 pictures of a good gray (which looks white) a black (without too much bleaching) and edit those.

As for the service part, the last few times we have gone out there, the owner Mary, had already gotten the chores done. So this last time we didn't know a head of time. So we just swept the isle and than picked up the trash around the pastures. I learned twice that the fence was on (which it usually isnt) due to that had a close contact with what I hope was mud, but I know it was 90% not.

I really could use some feedback on the website, since my roommate has no idea what I am going on about half the time.
and that is http://fadedoak.com/uwsp/project.htm

Also the pictures included are are Shakira, who decided to roll in what we are going to call mud, you can see on her inner leg and her face what color she SHOULD be, but isnt. There is also a picture of the farm from the road, its only one of the pastures, theres about 30 horses there or so. (PS, the on lying down is not dead, he just enjoys sunning himself) The pictures of the horses running are of the two new rescues, they are both untrained, and nearly ran me over. The cat is patches, who is just as much as this project as any of the horses, she will jump up into your arms if you want her to or not. That little dent in her fur is where she burned her head on a lamp. Shes not the smartest thing...

Animation

This past week I went through the information that I had about cellular respiration and tried to break it down step by step into a fairly simplified version of the complete cycle. Trying to simplify something as complex as cellular respiration has been much more difficult than I first thought it would be, but going through this process I am learning quite a bit. First I am learning how to think different, thinking differently in trying to figure out a way to make others understand the points I'm trying to make, this has required me to change my tactics several times and overall is starting to make me a more adaptable person in a sense. Also, by running through the steps so many times in my head I almost know the entire cycle like the back of my hand.
Our group also met this week Thursday after lab got out. During our time together we began making preliminary sketches of what the animation is actually going to look like along with a very primitive script which will be easier to refine later on. We discussed back and forth the information that we believed to important and what information we absolutely needed in order for the whole process to make sense.
Our next meeting time is after lecture next Tuesday.

Humane Society

This week, I went to the humane society on Tuesday, April 14 and Wednesday April 15. I spent two and a half hours volunteering on Tuesday and an additional hour on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Vicki and I mainly focussed on walking dogs. We took a young light brown pitbull out. Vicki was really scared of it because of all of the stories of these dogs being mean, but actually this dog was really nice. Then, we walked a border collie. This dog was one of my favorites. She was so nice and easy to walk . Then, we went and played with a few cats for a little while. The next day we walked a beagle and then a black lab. All of these dogs were so good and friendly. I was actually really surprised that almost all of the animals at the humane society are nice to people, but I found out the people there test the animals to make sure they are kind to humans. They test the animals by grabing their tail and bothering them while they are eating. They need people to voluteer with these animals so the animals become use to humans and become more friendly, loveable animals. By voluteering, we make these animals kinder creatures, so they will be more likely to get adopted into a nice home. I try to play with the older more scruffy animals because they are are less likely to be adopted and need a lot of attention.The first day I volunteered, I was really surprised to see how small the kennels and homes were for these animals. They should have more room to run and play. I think the community should raise money to help build a larger humane society. The society should also make paths going back into the woods, so we are not restricted to just walking the dogs around the small building. These dogs should have a large fence outside so we can let them off their leash and play catch with them outside. By volunteering at the humane society, I'm helping the community and gaining knowledge about animals at the same time. I am always excited to voluteer at the humane society, and I look forword to it every week.

My service learning project is going great so far. I really love working with the elderly, especially the Alzheimer's patients. I've been doing about two activities a week the past couple of weeks, and every week we do the same one. Basically we take big baloons and throw them to the elderly person and they hit it back. It really doesn't sound like much, but to them it must be a lot of fun because they are always smiling. The little movement it takes to move their arms is great for them too. Another activity is taking a foam bat and having them hit the balloon which is on a string. I was surprised with how well they all did this. One patient in particular couldn't move her wrist or arm enough to fully the swing the bat. All she could do was lightly tap on the ball with the bat. It was really sad to see that she could barely move, but when I rolled the balloon to her she could really kick it! It surprised me that she had so much more movement in her legs when she is even in a wheel chair. A few of the patients are better off than others, so I took about 4 of them and put them in a small circle and had them kick a ball back and forth to each other. They were sitting though because they have pretty bad balance. They did really good kicking the ball and were smiling and laughing the whole time. I also help with just moving the patient's arms and legs up and down, so they get some movement since most of them can't move them much on their own. It is really a weird feeling to feel how stiff they are and how hard it is to move their joints.

While talking with one of the patients, she asked me what my name was and where I was from. I told her my name is Kayla and I grew up in Green Bay, and she asked if I liked it and I said I did. She then answered well that's great and gave me a big smile. I walked away and came back about two minutes later, and I was surprised that she asked me the same exact question, and had the same responses. I know this is from her dementia, but it still surprised me.

This past week I went in on Wednesday since I had some time, and I hadn't been there since the friday before. I was very surprised when one of the patients who's dementia is pretty severe came up to me and said," Oh your back again!" She then asked what we were going to do that day, so I really think she rememered me. That was such a great feeling because I felt like it really means something when I come in and spend time with them. Even though I work there, the patients don't remember who I am, and always aske me my name, so it was great to know that doing the extra activities was giving us a better relationship.

Cellular Respiration On Track #2

It was another productive week for our group. We met at the library Thursday, April 17th from 3:45-5:30pm to continue the work we've already started. Steven, Steph, Liz, and I brought more information to the table and began, as a group, the discuss the specific outline for our animation and the narration to go along with each step/slide. We found it easy to artistically interpret what information we wanted to get across during glycosis, the kreb cycle, and electron transport stages, but it was difficult to put this information into terms and words that could be used for a variety of biology classes at all levels. There are a lot of technical terms so we worked on breaking down the information to be more suitable for learning and for teachers who are looking for a basic understanding for their students. Liz has spent the past week working on the backround template for the slides and next week we will begin making masks and seperate slides that will eventually run together for an Imovie. This weekend I am going to try to find additional information on the Kreb cycle to see if we can interpret this more easily. Our group is going to meet again on Tuesday after class to do some computer work and gather our thoughts on some lingering issues. Overall, I'm happy with how our project is turning out but we certainly have a lot of work to do yet.

Sunshine and Schmeekle

This week, Lauren and I ventured out to Schmeekle again to check out how it looks since we've had such nice weather. The trails were almost all dried out from the rain and snow, so we got to work clearing out extra brush and debris that could get in the way of bikers, runners, or people just walking and enjoying the scenery. We picked up A LOT of litter as well, which really enhanced how pretty the environment is out there. In addition, we looked around for a type of weed, which is an invasive species in Schmeekle, but we didn't see any. We actually walked in pretty far since it was so nice out, and saw a variety of wildlife including ducks, several birds, a few rabbits, and a small rodent or two. It's a great feeling to be helping out in Schmeekle, especially with the nice weather because we're helping others enjoy wildlife without having to step over a bunch of litter and debris. It's also good to know that the animals don't have to deal with it either. It should be fun to go out there more now that it keeps getting warmer!

Service Learning- YMCA

Last Monday at the Y, there were only two kids working out, so when they were done, I went to the other section of the room and played air hockey and pool against James who come to Family Prime Time. I learned that his father is a physical therapist who works in Stevens Point, which I found interesting because that is what I planned on going into. It was fun switching up what I do from working out to having fun, it was a good change of pace. In my time at the YMCA, I learned all that kids can do to get into or stay in shape from a very early age. The Y offers many programs for the kids ranging from the machines that only work by resistance, to exercise programs that involve running and being aerobically active. I believe that this volunteering has helped shed some light on what I want to do with my life. I learned that I really like working with kids and I also like making muscled work correctly, so I think my thoughts about becoming a physical therapist are very good, maybe I should specialize in pediatrics. Based on the service I had, people can really make a difference in the community. I found myself looking forward to Mondays because I got to go volunteer at the Y and have a good time doing it. The people who work there have a really sweet gig. They get to play with the kids or help them work out and they get paid for it.