Why it was needed

This project was a one-off volunteering event which ran to promote volunteering to students and to give an idea for what sort of project students at Kingston University could set up through Junction 49. The day ran at a local school for children with physical disabilities and associated learning difficulties. The school has both primary and secondary classes. The school are always keen to have new exciting activities running and love having student volunteers in to help out as the children really enjoy having new people in to meet.

What's being done

The day ran on November 5th and the whole school took part. I split the day into 3 sections and every class had a chance to experience all 3 sessions. The 1st session was with 2 professional storytellers who came in to set the theme for the day (Bonfire Night/Guy Fawkes Day), they told interactive stories about fireworks, firework safety etc. After the storytelling session, one half of the school did cookery and the other did an art session. The cookery session involved making and decorating gingerbread Guy Fawkes and Gingerbread shaped fireworks. The children really enjoyed this session as they got to help with all the weighing, mixing, rolling, decorating and most importantly eating of their GingerBread Guy Fawkes. In the art session every pupil made their own firework display picture, this involved a LOT of glitter and glue! After lunch the sessions swapped round so everyone had a chance to do every activity.

How it started

It started with a meeting with a teacher at the school, it was decided that this theme day would be best as it could involve a lot of fun activities that all the pupils would be able to enjoy.

I then planned all the activities, wrote out a budget and carried out a risk assessment for the activities. I also wrote out a session plan for the activities so the volunteers and teachers knew what each session was about.

The activity day was then advertised to students. All of the volunteers were briefed before the day and were assigned a class each

More

Feedback from the school was really positive and they are very keen for another themed activity day to run in the future.

Feedback from volunteers:

"A great experience, something very different. I don't think i could have experienced something like this if I didn't volunteer."

"The kids were so nice and seemed really happy for us to be there! I would definetly love to go back!"

"I had a lovely time at the school, it was really enjoyable. The children were lovely and I got to learn a lot from them. It was a memorable day."