Saturday, April 30, 2011

Blacklight Art Project April 28, 2011

Today Elmo gave another art lesson!

First she talked to us about light theories like how natural light has a rainbow of colors. Then she explained to us what black light really is. After that we looked a bunch of different household chemicals and had to predict which ones would glow and why. We wrote down our answers on the back of these colored pieces of special paper.

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Once we figured out what would glow (highlighters, dish soap, laundry detergent, Elmer's glue, etc) we cut out patterns Elmo printed out for us and glued them to colored paper.

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On the white areas of those patterns we painted using the chemicals that we knew would glow!

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Our projects looked super cool when they were done!

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Friday, April 29, 2011

Happy Easter!

We celebrated Easter by decorating eggs and cupcakes.....and, of course, eating them too!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Cleaning up....

We love San Marcos and we recently gave back by cleaning up City Park.

Monday, April 18, 2011

YSB Fundraiser!

Come support us this Thursday! We are having a fundraiser this Thursday at Panda Express. Bring this flyer with you and YSB will receive 20% of the proceeds. Thanks for your support!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Go Bobcats!



Last week we had the opportunity to meet some of the Texas State football players and coaching staff. Go Bobcats!

Learning more every day.....


We've had a lot of good presentations lately (and some fun games as pictured above) from a group of Texas State Social Work students and other members of the community. We've learned about internet safety, resume building and job interviews, and healthy relationships.

Let's Celebrate!


Nothing like celebrating Valentines Day together as friends with some tasty ice cream!

Friday, February 11, 2011

Around Town....


With an old city map in hand we hit the town to see what has changed in San Marcos since the 1800's and what is still the same. It was super interesting to visit the historic buildings in town and to learn fun facts like how Five Mile Dam got its name. (Answer: Because it's five miles from the court house!)


Thursday, January 20, 2011

More Christmas fun....



We had a great holiday season with a fun Christmas party and caroling at Sunrise Village.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Children's Xmas Party Dec 2010

So today we threw a Christmas party just for the little ones at the South Side Community Center shelter and awesome tykes in our lives!

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First the YSB teens helped the kids decorate their own cookies! Julie, our awesome director, did an fantastic job of creating homemade icing for the event!

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The cute munchkins were also treated to hot coco and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

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After that, our teens painted the faces and hands of some of the kiddos with Christmas patterns.

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Probably the tiny guests' favorite part, though, was getting to pick from a bunch of toys donated to the shelter!

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The best holiday gift is getting a bright smile from a little one!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Annual Chili Cook-off

A huge thanks to all the volunteers and members of the community who helped make our annual chili cook-off a huge success!

Friday, December 3, 2010

Charity Art Project November 2010

So one of our volunteers told us about this lady who runs an organization that mails hand-made gifts from various donors to people in the hospital...

Elmo and the YSB decided to contribute by making tiny books! We are still in the middle of making some, but basically the finished projects will have heart-felt poems in them to make people feel better!

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Yup we have made a bunch so far!

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Saturday, November 20, 2010

Medieval/Renaissance Art Lesson Nov. 18, 2010

Elmo gave us an art lesson today that was a modified version of one she gave as a teacher intern: "The Evolution of Art During Medieval and Renaissance Times."

First, we showed her what we already knew about the time periods by using messenger pigeons (well actually they were balloons.) Our groups brainstormed what we knew and one person wrote that information on our pigeon. Then we *sent* our pigeons over to partners on the other side of the room to relay our messages. Those partners read what we knew aloud. Turns out we knew a lot already!

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Then Elmo filled in our knowledge gaps with a quick lecture about the art of those eras...

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After that we showed Elmo what we learned by participating in a team answer-game competition. We had to slap in our answers using feather dusters and the the top two teams won glow-stick bracelets!

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At the end of the lesson we learned about the jobs of apprentice artists and even did one of their jobs: paint making. We made our own paint using 1 spoonful of water, 1 spoonful of liquid starch, and 2 drops of food coloring. At the bottom of our paintings Elmo asked us to write one thing we found interesting about her lecture.

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One of us thought it was funny that because it wasn't acceptable to have female models in the Renaissance time period, a lot of women were portrayed pretty "manly" in art.

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One of us thought it was pretty crazy that Medieval people thought that CATS caused the Black Plague!

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Thursday, November 18, 2010

Elmo is decormorated!

Today we put address labels on our partner's, the United Way, mail outs.

One of our students decided to give Elmo a makeover and fashion statement :P

Friday, November 5, 2010

Happy Halloween!


We had a great Halloween and hope you did too!

Helping the great outdoors...


It's always a privilege (and a lot of fun!) to help collect important seeds.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Game Day October 2009

Today we got to bond with each other and play a bunch of games.

Some of our teens even taught us new games!

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Crazy awesome times!

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