Club youths soar on water, help with lavender

Published 5:06 pm Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Brain Gain

This week in Brain Gain, children went around the world learning a variety of math problems originating in different countries.

We learned about Chinese magic squares, Peruvian quipu math recorders and Roman numerals. After introducing a 3×3 magic square to the children, one of the children, Chris, became fascinated and determined to make nine different magic squares that filled a whole page.

He was extremely focused and ended up achieving his goal! Everyone was very impressed with his ability to manipulate numbers to make that many magic squares. In addition to math, we learned the definition of ethnicity and the amount of different ethic groups in the United States. We demonstrated the diversity in the United States by looking at the different countries some of our words derive from. For example, we learned that pajamas is Hindi, sky is Scandinavian and cotton is Arabic.

After learning the languages these words derive from, children found the different countries on the world map, recognizing that many of the American words came from all over the globe. One of our final activities acknowledged global issues like world hunger, health issues and lack of education. This opened their eyes to the worldwide suffering. The children invented a product that provided a solution to one of these problems, realizing that they are able to make a global difference.

Junior Rangers

The young rangers from both clubs combined last week for a trip to Lake Crescent. They made the 20-mile trek west of Port Angeles to the alpine lake for the rare opportunity to paddle a canoe.

Nature Bridge staff took four boats of 16 children on a two-hour paddle across the lake and back. Each canoe was guided and entertained with folklore. The lake carved by a glacier experienced a landslide from the top of Storm King thousands of years ago. Legend says, the gods were angry at the war by the native tribes and they threw a boulder from the mountain top, wiping out the warriors, and damning Indian Creek, enlarging the lake.

The boys and girls were entertained by the “Lady of the Lake” tale, young Hallie was strangled by her husband, tossed in the lake with weights only to turn to soap and float to the top three years later. The field trip to the lake also included the two-mile roundtrip hike to the 90-foot Marymere Falls.

Morning Camp

Young morning campers took their travels to Asia this last week, taking a look at Japan, China, Vietnam and India. The Japanese bean bag game Otedama was enjoyed by members as they tossed the bean bags back and forth between them with each toss increasing in difficulty as challenges were introduced.

Their journey to China had them crafting fortunes and placing them in their edible fruit leather fortune cookie. The campers also made pickled carrots for their day spent on Vietnamese culture. The highlight of the week was a visit from the Shula Azhar. The group presented in full Indian costume belly dancing with the awesome and technically challenging choreography.

What a week

In addition to our standing programs, the members had fun playing baseball, running sprints and playing freeze tag with running club and playing pick-up games of basketball in the gym. Twenty members went on an exclusive girls field trip to see the Seattle Storm play for the WMBA’s Children’s Day.

The girls mentoring group named themselves L5 (Lovely Ladies Learning Life Lessons.) and the Boys II Men, mentoring group gathered for a barbecue and built fences for use at the Sequim Lavender Festival Street Fair. That is where you found Sequim and Port Angeles teens this past weekend. They were busy setting up tables, chairs and umbrellas for thousands of visitors. The helpful teens were there all weekend parking cars, emptying garbage cans and tearing it all down Sunday evening. The Sequim Lavender Growers Association hires the club for their services and coupled with providing the In-City Shuttle, the club makes over $10,000 helping produce the iconic weekend.

Brain Gain is a weekly series of activities happening at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula. For more information, see positiveplaceforchildren.net or call 683-8095.