Working with Children and Youth

• Distribution of “Personal Hygiene Kits”

• Toys, Clothes and Books Distribution Drive

• Reading Programmes

• Bridging Programme (preschool to primary)

• Peer Tutoring Programme

• Mentoring At-risk Children

• Festival Celebrations (Chinese New Year, Hari Raya Puasa, Deepavali, Christmas)

• Carnival Facilitators

• Design of Well-wishes Card

• Visits to Homes of Youth-at-Risk

• Adopt a Home

• School “Beautification” Project

• Teach-a-Skill

• Raising Awareness Campaign

1409 & 1432 Service Learning Project- Christmas Party @ CDAC 9 Dec 2014

Classes 1409 and 1432 embarked on a collaborative S-L project which aimed to spread the joy of giving this Christmas season by engaging children in a series of games and activities during their Christmas Fiesta 2014. Participants from the two classes collaborated with 3 different CDAC centres where the Christmas Party was held. The 3 sessions were held in the morning at Tanjong Katong Headquarters, while the other 2 concurrent sessions were held in the afternoon at Redhill and Punggol centres respectively. In order to maximize the student-child ratio, we split the children up into groups of 5 where 1 of us played the role of a group facilitator for each of the 4 groups.

The Christmas Party started off with some icebreaker games so as to break the ice among ourselves and the children, followed by an Art & Craft session where the children made pencil holders using ice-cream sticks. Then, to emphasize the spirit of thanksgiving during the Christmas season, the next activity, Not-so-secret-Santa, required the children to make and decorate Christmas cards for their family members or friends. We wanted to encourage the children to think of the things that their family members and friends have done for them which they are grateful for. The Christmas Party ended with a Christmas Quest where we had several station games such as A-Z Freeze Game, Group Knot, Save Santa through Math and Mini Science Convention.

Student Reflections

Rachel Goh (1409) & Nicolette Chua (1432) have this to say, “Although the Christmas Party was only a 3-hour programme, we are convinced all of us learnt a lot from this project, right from the planning to the preparation, even before the actual execution of the programme. As much as we tried to stick to the programme flow and the allocated timings, we still had to adapt to changes. For instance, we set 30 minutes for icebreaker games initially but after the morning session, we realised that the Art & Craft session required much more time than allocated. Hence, we decided to cut 10 minutes from the icebreakers and made adjustments throughout the afternoon sessions. This experience has taught us the importance of improvisation in such situations. Also, since we were working with children, the project taught us to be more patient especially when dealing with the rowdy ones.”