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Great experience as SLC members from different project groups were able to try something new by working with different beneficiaries. The kids also seemed really happy during that session, especially because we incorporated mini competitions in the science activities to keep them engaged. I learnt that it is important for us to stay enthusiastic while speaking to the kids because it can influence them to be more interested in what we are teaching, making the service session much more productive!

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Jovine - Service Learning Exchange (2 Feb 2024) 

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Jovine - Service Learning Exchange (2 Feb 2024) 

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Today we conducted an activity to teach the kids about sound using glass beakers. I felt that the activity finished too early and it seemed like the kids felt slightly bored. I think this may be due to them only being excited to play games after the science activity. Hence, we should think of more engaging activities to get their attention. 🙌🏻

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Damian: Balloon Experiment (10 Nov 2023)

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Damian: Balloon Experiment (10 Nov 2023)

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Our team conducted an experiment on air and forces for the children. I felt that this session was quite well planned as it was a continuation from the previous lesson on water, hence enabling the children to gain a more complete understanding on the 3 states of matter. This was also the first service session that we tried to split the children into groups to conduct the hands on segment which proved to be effective in connecting with each child on a more individual level and giving each child more equal attention. This service session taught us that planning more hands on experiments actually engaged the children a lot better as the children were genuinely excited to play with the balloons and hence increased their attention to the lesson as they looked forward to having fun with the balloons. It also helped our team realise the importance of checking that the logistics for the session are in good condition as many balloons that day were old and did not inflate well, hence the children did not get to enjoy the activity as much. Personally, planning and conducting this activity has been a really enjoyable process as I managed to curate something that the children really enjoyed and I would say this service is successful since the children enjoyed it and took something away from it.

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This experiment was really popular amongst kids as it combined both science and art elements into the experiment. I personally feel that this experiment went really well as it was easy to understand and the hands on activity definitely made it more memorable for the kids. I could tell they really enjoyed it as many kids did the experiment multiple times and even brought home the stained filter paper. One issues however is that it could get a little messy as the link from the markers would sometimes leak through.

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Jovine - J1 Taster Session (27 March 2024)

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Jovine - J1 Taster Session (27 March 2024)

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Today we brought 3 J1s to experience service at IJ Agape.

Unexpected situation:

1. Another volunteer came to conduct an Easter activity because she was not aware that we would be coming down on that day.

2. Person in-charge forgot to ask Auntie Loo to buy materials needed for our parachute drop science activity.

Hence, we decided to help the volunteer in conducting her activity which was for the kids to find the hidden plastic eggs and solve math questions afterwards. They seemed to have a lot of fun.

Thankfully, the session ended up running quite smoothly. We also managed to conduct our planned experiment since the centre had the materials (trash bags, strings, tape)

Things to learn:

1. Be adaptable

Overall it was a good session! ☺️

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The experiment with gummy bears was to allow the children to see the effect of osmosis with a gummy bear shrinking when put in salt water. The children were mostly curious by the use of the gummy bears as they wanted to eat them but were engaged in the session. As this experiment needed time to show the results, we weren’t prepared to see that there was no visible change in the size of the gummy bear so it was hard to explain the process of osmosis without having visual representation of it through our experiment however some of them managed to understand after we explained it to them by drawing on the whiteboard. I think that we should have done the experiment beforehand to see how much salt we needed to add to cause the gummy bear to shrink and to check how much time we needed to prepare this before the session. However, we were able to adapt to this and explained it with another method such as drawing a diagram on the board so they were able to understand the concept.

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We taught the children about the water cycle explaining to them the changes in state from liquid to gas and how it happens in the real world. We used a ziplock bag with water and heated it up allowing condensation to take place, simulating an actual water cycle. However, we did not trial run the experiment ourselves and thus faced some difficult on the actual day as it took a long time for water droplets  to form and if it did form it was also not very obvious. We also had to explain why the condensation was not coloured but the initial water was coloured which was a bit tougher for them to understand  