Life lesson #254: Some setups just aren't really conducive.

Today I hosted a group of eleven 6-to-9 year olds from the Rochester Christian Daycare. You are probably thinking, "WHAT! Was she crazy?!" Yes, yes I was.

I won't get into detail about how this day came to be or what my mental state was throughout the planning process... Let's just say I was embarking on some charity work, and besides it's in everyone's best interests to get kids excited about opportunities in higher education (even if they ARE way too young to understand what that even means and will never remember that one awesome day they spent at the Center for Imaging Science at RIT*). Every little bit counts, right? Anything that can be done to keep kids on the right track to a successful future should have every effort made to come to fruition. And, I'll try anything once. And so, I agreed to give these kids a fun day.

*Then again, maybe they will. One of the kids is already convinced she is going to Nazareth for college - reason being, she saw a stage production of Frog & Toad there and really liked it. (Admittedly, I have always loved Frog and Toad, too - so I can understand her logic.)

Luckily, I had a lot of help today - I can always count on Bob to be there (thank goodness), and I promised a free lunch to any interns who had some spare time and were willing to assist (and 4 of them actually fell for it!

Don't they look excited? Buck up, gals!

...j/k! THANK YOU Cassie, Olivia, Kaila, and Sadie!!!!!). 

We started off with a color spinners activity, where the kids could color in wedges on a circle cut out of a paper plate. We adults would then tape them to a cardboard disc and punch holes in the disc to thread through some string. The kids could then hold either end of the string and wind up the spinner to see how the colors combine as the string unwinds and the disc spins.  

I wove in some lessons about color: how color works, how we perceive it, how colors combine, etc. Listening to me talk wasn't as much fun as doing the actual spinning, though, so we moved on to the next activity.

For the "Colors Change Appearance" activity, the kids started out by drawing either a red or a green square on a piece of paper. They then had to stare at it for 1 whole minute, after which they would look away to a white piece of paper and tell me what they could see.

No, they're not sleeping - they are starting intently. The only periods of complete silence we got all day.

We recorded their observations, and then the kids with red squares switched with the kids who had green squares, and we repeated the experiment. This whole process was pretty interesting - some kids were very, very slow at coloring and had to have their drawings be JUST RIGHT. Other kids could not sit still long enough to stare at a square for 60 seconds. Other kids could sit still but stared directly at me and not at their square. And then once the minute was up and they were looking at the white sheet, they whined about not being able to see anything... and when I told them it was because they didn't stare at the square, they vehemently denied it, even though I watched them and knew they weren't following directions. Ah, the joys of working with children. Anyways, eventually we figured out that staring at green makes you see red, and vice versa, and I taught the kids about opposites and complementary colors. We had another color appearance activity that we tried which involved drawing three squares of the same color and then drawing squares of other colors around them, but the kids were getting antsy and not really following along anymore so we decided to get ready to go for lunch. 

The kids were teamed up in pairs and each pair was given a single-use camera that they were encouraged to take pictures with. And with that, we were off to lunch.

Taking pictures in the quad.

The kids were LOVING the cameras.

Howdy, neighb- hey wait, how did Jeff and Bo get there?

Lunchin' in Global Village.

A rare moment with all the kids actually sitting down.

A picture with everyone in front of the fountain, and then it's off for the mini campus tour!

I've never seen this many people interested in the Global Collaboration Grid.

Even something as simple as walking across a bridge is exciting when the average age is 7.

On the other hand, clean rooms are exciting at any age.

We were going to take a picture with the Formula car, but the kids couldn't keep their hands off it, so we took the picture from outside instead.

Apparently the kids needed some time to work off some excess energy, so they started running laps around the Infinity Loop. Then they needed refreshment.

After we got back from our little outdoor adventure, it was time to get started on the camera disassembly. Each of the pairs of kids was given an adult to work with to do all the dangerous stuff, as I led them through the procedure. This was pretty slow going, but it was worth it for the exciting part:

The kids had a great time with this, and had a lot of fun playing with all the parts of the camera once it was safe to do so. Most of the kids even wanted to take the parts home to play with further, which is cool.

With limited time left, we had to squeeze in play time with the FLIR. The daycare instructor had mentioned ice cream as a treat earlier in the day so after lunch I went into Crossroads and bought some, knowing it would double as a fun experiment with the FLIR.

Doesn't ice cream look delicious in the thermal infrared?

The kids had a BLAST drawing on themselves with ice.

The garbage bag trick is always a fun one. Here she was holding up fingers for us to count.

And the good ol' glass trick. OooOoOoOoo

The kids practically had a riot during this exercise, they loved it so much. There was screaming and hysterical laughter for a good 15 minutes straight - I can only imagine what the folks in the nearby offices were thinking (if any of you are reading this: I am SO sorry.). Each of the kids then got their picture taken and printed out for them to take home with them. The FLIR was definitely a great high point to end the day on, and all the kids left excited and happy. Especially excited.

All in all, this was a good day - The kids obviously had a lot of fun, and hopefully they even learned a little something. I heard some of the kids exclaiming that they would definitely be coming to RIT for college - we'll see whether they really follow through, in only about a decade or so ;-). As for me, I am ending my day with a headache and a heavy sigh of relief... Am I glad I did it? Yes. Will I do something like this again? Probably not (sorry!). Has this taught me how to say "no" to events that don't really jive well with what we do here? Hopefully. Will I ever have children of my own? Remains to be seen...

For a dose of honesty you won't get anywhere else: 
Cassie's blog from today
Kaila's blog from today