Art Fair @ School 9 Planning+ Reflection

Planning Part

Last week I was informed that on this Tuesday we have an opportunity to create our own activity for the School 9 children (it is a primary school). So I decided to sign up for an activity which I have never done before: play dough creations.

I came up with this idea through searching for interesting fun activities for children and this one was approved by my classmates. For the planning part, I got some extra packs toothpicks at home and asked Ms Platt, the main person to ask for supply, for some play dough. She promised to make some herself and then colour them. 

We were separated into groups of 4 to carry out our activities, in a way to work as a team and support each other.

I anticipated some of the possible problems such as shortage of supply or insufficient time management but the last moment announcement about an increase of number of participants almost caught me off guard. 

Reflection

The day started great! Before going to the bus, Ms Platt suggested to colour the play dough. I never done this before so I used too much force on mixing the ink and the dough which resulted with a pair of blue hands.Luckily I was able to wash it off later. 

On the arrival to school, we went to the assigned rooms for each individual group. My group consisted of Johnny,Benny, Ho Jun(who left us for some random reasons) and I. 

  When the activity started the fact that there was 20 children instead of 12 really emphasised our shortage of play dough. Some of the members of our group asked the teachers in school 9 for some more supply, and luckily they had some for us. 

The time management was a challenge because some of the children were finished wit the task really fast. So ask them to make something new for the final display. 

 In addition, for safety reasons, we told everyone to be careful when using toothpicks. 

The afternoon activity originally Johnny's and we just helped him around. The main purpose was to make an animal mask by using plastic plates, strings and colouring pencils. 

In this activity Johnny was very proactive on asking what the children were doing which really inspired me and motivated me to follow his path. 

We also worked as a team because there were around 20 of them in the afternoon group when there were only 3 of us. Each person supported the children to make their final product by cutting eye holes for masks, cutting string and sticking in on mask or even giving some ideas for the mask.

There were some minor problems such as the string ripped the sides of the mask which caused the mask to fall. I overcame this problem by using tape to fix the string, rather than the traditional way.

Overall, the activity went very well and everyone was happy with the result. Even we have made some mask ourselves for the sake of demonstration.

In summary, I have planned my activity with helps from others and initiated it. I have also worked collaboratively: both making decision and supporting others. I have also taught children some ethics by telling them to be careful with sharp equipments and dealing with them myself most of the times. Finally, I identified my weakness in communications and supplemented it with my strength of demonstration. 
It was very fun day and I really enjoy it! 

P.S. Special thanks to Karina(super organiser), Johnny, Benny, Ms Platt and others.Without them there wouldn't be such a great event.

Some personal evaluations :D

After yesterdays success in making a weekly plan, I thought to myself, how can I understand myself better? Suddenly, an idea came to my mind: a personal evaluation.This would a good place to rest and evaluate my relative weaknesses and strength across subject and even some personal issues.
Without further ado, here is some screen shoots how does this file looks like:

This is just the front page and the beginning of the file. I started with my academics which includes 6 subject plus TOK and CAS. In each subject I assessed myself as objectively as I could. As you can see, the blue text represent what I currently doing well while the red text means my weaknesses within the subject.

In addition, you would ask what is that in green text then? Those are some my personal recommendations for myself on how to improve my weaknesses. Each recommendation should directly tackle each weakness.

Finally, those are some of my personal weaknesses in general. I may follow my own recommendations but I also may combine them with my present cas activities to make little changes at a time. This should a gradual process because people can't change that fast, at least I can't.
I conclusion, I have showed sufficient evidence of self-evaluations which reinforces with one of the cas objectives: increase awareness of personal weaknesses and strength. Furthermore, I have shown my commitment by making it a proper document(PDF file) and committing to improve upon my weaknesses. I feel that this activity give me a better understanding of myself which would be very useful tool in future because self critic is a quality employers look for.

New Weekly Plan ^_^

Recently, we have reached a term break. For us this a good news but not so much for year 13 because they have their IB exams. Good luck guys! 

Anyway, the thought of future exams alarmed me so I decided to make myself more organised. I remember I have made a similar time table for my CAS activities but because of my lack of determination and procrastination I have not fulfilled the aims I set. Looking at it now, I may have to start from a lower point, besides doing too many things at once may not guarantee the quality of work or take time from other equally important tasks but those are just some excuses, haha.

This is my weekly plan :D

As can seem above, this is just a draft of a plan which I will use and change as I go along. One of the most important purposes of this plan is for me to start a good sleeping habit since I feel really tired in morning and believe this isn't a good thing. With regular sleeping regime I would like to achieve better mental and physical states in order to do tasks more efficient and energetic. All in all, I have considered my weaknesses and attempted to improve from them. Plus I have organised my working hours for a more productive way to study and do work in general, which I believe will be very useful in my future life.