Plan for children while they are at my house.

Tomorrow, the children for Arun Shanti Nivas are going to come to my house. I had invited them the last i had gone to visit them. I figured that i wasn't any good at teaching them, and also that i was told that they were given only pure vegetarian food, and that they were allowed only in a few occasional events to have chicken. Also the fact that they had holidays, so they were not allowed to go out and play cricket.

So what i had planned out for them, is:

1. Cricket
2. Food (lunch and tea)
3. Movie
4. Some badminton ( depends on how many kids know how to play )

I was told that all the kids play cricket, so i will divide them into 2 teams, 1 that i will lead and the other would be led by the other oldest guys who's name is Mohankumar. We would play series of many games with 5 overs each. We will plan out accordingly, which would be the best way to play and win.

Visit to Arun Shanti Nivas

Today i went to Arun Shanti Nivas today. It was a pleasant area, it was a small building with a garden and a drive way. As i entered the building i was approached by small children. They seemed to be shy. I was told that i would be escorted by the manager of the place, he explained the whole place and how it worked. There was a worship place where they had all 3 gods, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. Followed by that were 2 dormitories and 1 dinning hall with a joint kitchen, and a class room.

There were a tot

al of 16 children, all boys. I was escorted to the class

room where all the kids got their books out and sat in a disciplined manner, and waited me to start. This was my first time teaching and i was a bit nervous, because the original plan that i had devised was, not working because there were children of all ages, some knew more English than the others, some were just starting to learn. I still went on and told

them to write 5 lines about themselves. All they could all write was:

1. Their hobby (to play cricket)
2. How old they were
3. Which school they went to
4. That, they were happy.
5. Their names

It was good to see that, they could for a sentence with less difficulties.

After they had all written their list, i thought that i should have some fun time with them, so i told the manager to ge

t the caro

m board, we all took a chance at it. Some were really good, and some had just started. I also took part, but i was too bad at it, that i lost the game.

This is when we played Carom.

This is when i was teaching them and classroom.

This the praying area.

This is their dormitory.

These children have really touched my heart, so to make them happier i decided to call them over to play cricket at my house this Saturday. Since all of them expressed the wish to play cricket, i thought that they would have a good time playing cricket and eating food. Every bit that we do will affect their life in some way. It really got me thinking, what would my life be without my parents? I don't know the pain of not having 1 parent let alone both. I really wish that we put all efforts into making them feel that they are wanted and have a bright future in front of them.

Plan for teaching the children at Arun Shanti Nivas.

Arun Shanti Nivas, is a organization that helps the needless and hopeless kids that have either been abandoned by their parents during war, or lost them and the children that have been abandoned for some other reason, but still have relatives.

These children are mainly Tamil boys, with 1 Sinhalese boy. They aren't as fortunate as us to have such comforting homes or accessories as us. They are blessed with a shelter, 3 times a day with food and education. These are the conditions which they live in. Their age ranges from 4 years to 18 years old.

PLAN:

I plan to teach them a bit of basic English.

1. I want to start of by asking them too write a bit about themselves, like about 5 lines.
2. I want to show them that their are other fun ways to learn English, like playing word tennis. Basically in this game, we are supposed to start with a word, then the next person is supposed to use the last letter of the word to form a new word.
3. I want to also play games with them, so that they don't feel like it is all about studying, it is also about enjoying yourself.

I hope this visit will benefit us both, them in a educational way and me in a satisfactory way.

AIS VS OSC (Badminton Match)

Today was our second match, that was against AIS ( Alethia International School). We were told that they were one of the best schools in terms of their Badminton team. Our school OSC, we had just started this year, and it was our first season. We didn't have our hopes much high.

We managed to do pretty well, especially the girls who managed to win most of their matches, in doubles and singles. It wasn't that good for the boys, but it was good training for us to play against a good team. Towards the end we had won 7 matches and lost 9. Which we considered to be really good.

My match was the doubles, me and Terunaga played a good match but we lost 8- 21. We made many mistakes like, while smashing we used to hit the net, or give them high shots, which they could smash easily. But now i know what i need to work on to me an improved player.

Badminton practices

Our badminton routine, has been really effective. Before every practice session we, do a drill that stretches our bodies. First we start of with the stretching our legs, after that we move on to hand stretching, doing 2-3 different stretches. We then do sprints form one side of the court to the other, back and forth, side ways also.

We then move on to the nets, where we do different drill to brush up our strokes and movement on the court. There are numerous movements that we practice, such as drop shots, running to the back of the court and hitting and then running back to the front to hit drop shots, the other drill is to pick up smashes and smash.

After all of this is over we rally, it is a way to warm up for practice matches. We play singles, doubles and mixed doubles, and evaluate who is good at what.

That is basically our practice routine. This routine has helped me to learn new skill such as drop shots and others. I wish to continue like this.

The Eight Criteria For CAS

1. Increased their awareness of their strengths and areas for growth
2. Undertaken new challenges
3. Planned and initiated activities
4. Worked collaboratively with others
5. Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities
6. Engaged with issues of global importance
7. Considered the ethical implication of their actions
8. Developed new skills

I think i have accomplished these goals, with the recent activities that i have done. These 2 years have taught me a lot about my self and what i can accomplish as an individual. CAS over all is a great program that allows a student to do something different, and learn about themselves and the people around them, it is just not about you, it is the what you can also do for others around you.

This is what i have learnt:-

Creativity: Helps you bring out your creative side, like organizing events, giving new ideas.

Action: To see your physical fitness and what you are able to do or help other people do.

Service: To be aware about whats happening around you, and take action in order to help or make a place a better environment.

The first CAS i joined was Cleft Clip and Palate. It was a new CAS which was started by one of my friend Rithvick, who initially planned to help raise money for the kids who had CCP and could not afford to pay for the surgery. We had quite some difficulties, in the beginning but we managed to have a good start. We raised money for the kids by having a party for fund raising, which was successful as we could pay for operations for 10 children.

But as time passed, Mr Lockwood told me that the CAS was not going anywhere and that i should change, so this semester i changed my CAS to recycling.

In the past 2 years i have (1) Increased my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth by cycling, i never thought i could cycle the way i used to when i was small, as i gained weight in the following years. But each day, was new as i could cycle for longer periods of time, and this became one of the good strengths as i figured that i could lose weight, and now i have developed that skill to help me with the stamina required in Badminton. (2) Undertaken new challenges, i was recently in borderlands in Kithugala and for the first time i was going white water rafting and cannoning, both of these which i am scared of. White water rafting because since i was a child i had fears of deep and fast waters, cannoning because i was always afraid of heights, but i took the challenge this time and did both the activities. (4) Worked collaboratively with others and (3) Planned and initiated activities , when i was in Cleft clip CAS we had the task of organizing an event to raise money for the surgeries, we had split the tasks equally amongst people and we managed to work things out independently like getting the tickets printed and sold on time, poster designed and ready to be pasted, getting the venue etc , during the planning stage, but the time when we all collaborated the best was during the party, when we all came together to help each other out with all the chaos, it was not needed to be said when a person needed help or a replacement at the bar, i think we managed as a whole to have a successful party with people going home smiling. Badminton is one of the few sports where i have shown the most (5) Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities, since the last 3 years, after i lost interest in swimming i found this sport to be really exciting yet competitive, i thought i could actually compete in this sport, the only way was to push my self and thats what i exactially did, and now that i am in the school team, it try to put all my effort in doing the best, going out of limit to prove to people that i can do it. (8) Developed new skills

OSC Vs British - Badminton match

On Friday we had a match against the British school. We were a team of 9, 5 girls and 4 boys. We had been practicing for this match for the past 2 weeks.

My first match was against a boy in singles, I knew that i had no chance to win, as i was really weak i single matches, so with no regrets i lost 8 to 21. I wasn't really disappointed because i didn't have much high hopes, also my team and our coach Mr De Sliva congratulated me for a good performance.

This is a picture of the team:-

2nd match was doubles, it was me and Terunaga as the doubles team, we were all prepared to win, the match even though it was our first time as partners and w

e had no formation or any coordination, keeping that in mind we still played randomly. Surprisingly we found our selves to be at 15- 21 (losing) towards the end. But in our heads, we knew we had done really well.

3rd match was me and Mo, it was mixed double, this was also our first time playing. We used the technique that was playing side by side and moving backwards if we were to hit the shuttle far back on the opponents side, there were many other moves. We managed to keep them below 4 points, while we managed to finish the game with a final score of 21-4. This was a big win, as the team had lost quite a few games.

Over all this has been a good experience for me, as i have learnt to work in a team, while playing badminton, and also has allowed me to become more confident about adapting in these tough situations. I hope not to see more situations like these, but if their are, then i will be ready to tackle them.