Art and Cupcakes

This year the office of service learning is starting up a new program with the Four Oaks Bridge students.  The program is opperating under the broad title of "art club", but has the potential for much more.  Last Friday was our first officially art club meeting.  We made decorations for the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art's upcoming family fun day.  The kids absolutely loved it; although, many of them wanted to take thier masterpeices home with them.  One little girl, who I have nicknamed "the abstract artist", smashed her cupcake into a plain white sheet of paper and proclaimed, "This is too good to be a decoration. This needs its own exhibit!"  We all had a good laugh. 

I don't have a complete game plan of what we are going to do with the kids each week, but we will be trying out some water color painting exercises this coming friday.  Some of my ideas include: jewlery making, collages, pop up books, oragami, and maybe even some creative writing.  All in all I think the program is going to be a success.  We even have some help from the CRMA, which has agreed to lend us some of thier educators to come teach the kids about calligraphy.  There may even be a field trip to the museum in the works! 

~Crystal

Going Green--Family Weekend Tree Planting!!!

This past weekend at Coe was Family Weekend.  An annual part of Family Weekend is the Coe Cares! Service Project.  This year we had over 100 students, parents, siblings, and friends sign up to participate in the event.  It was a great turn out!!! We sent just over 50 volunteers to the Habitat for Humanity "Blitz Build" site.  They spent the morning putting the finishing touches on the 13 recently built homes.  Some of their projects included painting trim work, installing cabinets, and other tasks.  

The rest of our 50+ volunteers headed to Squaw Creek Regional Park in Marion for National Public Lands Day.  Members of the non-profit group Trees Forever, the Linn County Parks & Recreation Department, the Linn County Conservation Department, and people from the Coe community came together to plant trees at the park in recognition of National Public Lands Day.  While at the park, we heard from members of the various organizations on the importance of trees both in terms of aesthetic appeal as well as resource & energy conservation.  Volunteers at the site learned how to properly plant trees for optimum growth with the help of the Linn County Parks & Recreation Department and the Linn County Conservation Department.  In just over an hour and a half, the 50+ volunteers planted 75 trees along the roadways of the park, placed mulch around the newly planted trees, and added tree guards to protect them from deer rubbing their antlers against the trunks.  

It was great to see families and students coming together to make a difference in the community.  All the volunteers I encountered seemed to be in great spirits and had fun planting the trees.  The cool/cold weather didn't keep us down.  It was a great project! I am glad I was able to be a part of it. 

Be sure to check out the photos on our slideshow of the work we did! 

Keep it green! 

An Awesome Week of Service

This week was cool because it was the first week that our incoming freshman actually got to start working with their service site. On Tuesday, I took a group of about 15 students to Mission of Hope to serve our first meal.  I got there around 10 AM to help prepare the food, and get things ready to go. At 11, Gail brought students over. Some of them helped cook, while others sorted clothing.  At noon the food was served.  It was so great to see the students excited about helping. It was cool to see how thankful the people we served were for food. It really made me appreciate how lucky I am that I have a roof over my head and food to eat for every meal. This was my favorite part of the process.  A little bit of work produced a lot of happiness for other people. This week I also want to make some activity packets to put in the backpacks that will be packed to send to Polk and Taylor.  Have a great week ;)

Welcome back Kohawks!

I hope everyone is having a great start to the school year! On Saturday, during new student orientation, I led a group of students to Polk Elementary School about 3 blocks away from campus. There was a map of the United States that had been painted outside on the playground that was very faded and needed to be redone. We helped to outline all the states with white paint provided by the school and the class is intending on filling in the states with color paint in a few weeks.


I am also a lunch buddy through the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization and my little was really excited about the work that we did! All the children were playing on the lines at recess and were jumping in and out of the states. My favorite part of it all was when my little and I walked outside and his eyes lit up as he said “You did this for us!?!” It’s nice to know that they really appreciate it!

After that, the group decided to walk a few blocks around the school and picked up trash along the streets. We had a contest to see who could find the best piece of trash! I am pretty sure the winner was a tennis ball which seemed to have been destroyed by a lawn mower. All in all, we had a great day! 

I wish you all the best of luck as the semester kicks off!

~Kayla~