Welcome Coco Ho!

Today was a really special day at the club. We welcomed a new volunteer to our team--Coco Ho! For those of who you don't know, Coco is a 19 year old surfer on the World Tour, sponsored by Volcom. With the help of Volcom's Sustainability & Outreach Director Derek, Coco chose the Aliamanu Boys & Girls Club as the site for her volunteer service. She'll be dedicating 50 hours of service to our club throughout the next year, leading special projects with our youth and other club youth around the island.

To prepare for our special guest, the members made a sign out of surfboards that said "Welcome Coco Ho!" It was a great way to show her how excited they were for her to come. We introduced her during our weekly announcements and the kids answered trivia questions to win some awesome prizes that Derek brought with him--Volcom tee shirts, stickers, hats and more!
Then Coco played a few games with the kids. She participated in the "Under Over Sponge Relays," played a game of pickup basketball, and helped her team win at pool! Read on to hear how much fun the kids had with her!

"I had a fun time with Coco. She is really cool to be around. I had fun playing basketball and at the pool table, but most of all I liked it when we were talking about college and high school. I told her I was going to Kahuku and she was surprised. I really think she is a good friend and I would never forget the time we were talking and she told me I am just like her friends at Kahuku High. I hope I meet her again!" ~Melysa K.
"Coco and JP beat Preston, Brandon and me in pool. She was very good at pool because she made most of the balls go in!" ~Chelsea

"I had an amazing time with Coco. We had a really fun time playing basketball and she is an awesome ping pong and pool player. And she smells like mangoes!" ~Preston

"Coco Ho is a very nice girl. She's super pretty and the most youngest girl surfer, and she was the youngest to enter the world tour! I would want to hang out with Coco to know her more and to be friends with her." ~Jaimie
"Today Coco Ho came to the Boys & Girls Club. She is cool and really nice! It was pretty fun meeting her. It was awesome for her to come visit us!" ~Caitlin

"Coco was a pretty cool person. I played basketball with her and she made a few shots and made me laugh sometimes. She should start coming here from now on. She's a cool person." ~Branden W.

"I had fun with Coco Ho. We did a picture of all of us in the end. It was fun!" ~Gabby

"Coco is good at pool. She won with JP. We won at basketball when I was on her team. And she almost beat me at ping pong!" ~Brandon B.

Mentos Rockets Take 2!

For Mad Science this week, youth tried the Mentos Rocket experiment again with different types of sodas. Their results were pretty awesome and it's obvious that the kids always love this one!

"Today was so cool! We got to put Mentos on a paperclip. Then we went outside. Guest what we did next? You got it--we made soda explode!" ~Keonna

"For this Mad Science, we put Mentos in soda so they would explode. Mine was one of the highest! But the best part was it exploding in Delysa's face!" ~Shantae
"OMG!! Mentos in soda is the best experiment you could possibly do. When I first put the Mentos in the soda, it started bubbling then shot out of the soda bottle! FUN!! But, the mystery is how do we get the paperclip with the Mentos on it out!?" ~Delysa

"I thought this was a fun Mad Science! Ours went the highest and it was awesome. I thought ours wasn't gonna go up, but it did!" ~Esther

"Our team was the last one, who got the highest. Exploding Mentos was awesome! After that, we started drinking it while the Mentos was still inside!" ~Justice

Get Your Pop-Pop-Popcorn!

Last night we returned to Radford High School for another fundraiser. We served fresh popcorn with a variety of toppings, juice and some candy. I'd like to say that it was a mad success and that we made tons of money, but unfortunately we didn't. But, I thought it was important to still blog about it because at the Boys & Girls Club we encourage honesty, learning from challenges, and admitting when we need to improve.

We learned that maybe basketball games aren't the best venue because fans aren't allowed to bring food into the gymnasium. We also learned that it's difficult to figure out how to price a fundraiser item--generally speaking, fundraiser treats are more expensive than they might be in a store because it's known that the profit is going to a good cause. However, if you price it too high, no one will buy it anyway! We ended up lowering the price halfway through the night and selling a few more bags. Another thing we realized is that popcorn doesn't really sell well when it's hot outside. We were lucky to have sunshine instead of rain, but most people didn't seem to want a hot treat!
That being said, our LITs still managed to make the night lots of fun. Gabby, our new LIT president, did a great job serving the popcorn to customers all night. Shantae used her skills from the snack bar to work the cash register too. Justice created fun slogans to advertise our treats (Get your pop-pop-popcorn!), and Kawehi and Carla ran through the stands handing out flyers. And when we weren't busy, the kids were practicing catching popcorn in their mouths and just hanging out with each other. At the end of the night when I drove everyone home, feeling somewhat disappointed with the results of the night, I was happy to hear the kids chatting in the back seat saying things like "Tonight was so much fun!" and "Can we do this again!?" It made me realize that the word FUN comes before FUND in fundraising.
Needless to say, if anyone has any great ideas for where we can sell a TON more popcorn in the future, let me know. :)

~Natalie, Program Director

Narratives for Nikes

Aliamanu was lucky enough to have an awesome pair of Nikes donated to us from an old staff member, Cynthia. To earn the shoes, members were asked to write an essay about their goals and plans for success, and then to compare and contrast them to Michael Jordan's success. Courtney blew us away with her amazing essay! What I really liked about it was the organization, complex sentences, vocabulary words and the use of a quotation.

This is going to be an essay that will compare and contrast my plans for personal success compared to Michael Jordan's determination to succeed. My plans for personal success would be always trying my hardest and never giving up. Another goal would be to have a job that I enjoy when I grow up. Also, I plan on helping others and giving back to the people who have helped me. I also plan on having a decided mind on what I want to do and stick with that. Lastly, I plan on staying active and doing sports like volleyball and having good sportsmanship. Those are some examples of some of my goals that I have for throughout my life.

Now I am going to tell you about how my plans for personal success and goals relates to Michael Jordan's determination to succeed. Michael Jordan was always compelled to try his hardest, just like my goals, if he didn't get something the first time he tried over and over; he took it personally if he didn't succeed which led to him to practice and try harder until he was the best at whatever it was he was trying to do. Like one time when he didn't make the high school varsity team; he set out to prove everybody wrong and soon after that he became the best player out of his entire school. This is just like my goal to never give up, I say this because he didn't give up at the sport, he kept trying and I hope I can do something like that instead of giving up because practice makes perfect and I can't get better at anything unless I try.

Michael Jordan once said "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. There was 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed." He means that we learn from our mistakes and you try harder so you don't make the same mistake and that is like my goal of trying my hardest all the time. This is because if we learn from our mistakes, then we try harder not to repeat that mistake and every time I mess up I would want to try harder and harder which means I am closer to succeeding each time.

He probably also planned on staying active just like me because he is into sports like basketball and I don't think he would just throw that away; I love volleyball and I don't think I could just get rid of it and quit playing; this is like my goal of continuing to be active.

What I like about Michael Jordan is that he always found time to give back. He was not greedy with his money and he always worked hard at everything that he did. He was very determined and never gave up. He always found a way to triumph in any situation. He always found time to spend with his family. This is how I hope to be when I grow up and this is some of the stuff that he does so this would be the same sort of thing as my goals. He is a good person for the most part and I hope to be like that, maybe even better.

Now I am going to talk about how my future plans contrast Michael Jordan's determination to succeed. One thing is that he doesn't have that good of sportsmanship. For example when he was on the Chicago Bulls he once lost a ping pong match to a teammate, he then went out and bought his own ping pong table and worked on his ping pong game for hours on end until he was the best ping pong player on the team. Michael Jordan was very results oriented and he always wanted to win and be the best; he set out to do just that, and he did. He is now in the Hall of Fame with six championship rings and regarded by many as the best basketball player ever. When I grow up I hope I can accept the fact that I am not the best and move on with my life and accept that I cannot always be the best at everything. That is one way he is not like me.

Another way his determination is unlike my own goals is because of the fact that he didn't stick with the same team all the time and he kept coming in and out of retirement. He went out on time for an injury (to get surgery on his knees) and another time because of depressions because of his dad's death. I can understand that, but he also went in retirement because he was tired of losing and then he joined the Wizards instead of going back to the Bulls. I hope that when I grow up I can make my mind and stick with it, even if the team I am on isn't always winning, I hope I would choose to stay with my own, original team but try to make improvements to the team so we have a better chance of winning other games.

Other than the two differences I hope I can be similar to Michael Jordan. That's all about how my goals and plans for personal success are similar and different to Michael Jordan's determination to succeed.

Egg Drop!!

Last Friday, the Mad Science program explored physics with the classic Egg Drop experiment. Youth were given a variety of materials to work with and then dropped the eggs from our "back porch" into the parking lot. The kids had a great time whether their eggs made it or not! Read on to hear what the kids thought:

"Well today we did the classic egg drop. I really had a fun time. When I dropped the egg, I felt that it was going to crack. But because of my cushy cushioning, my egg didn't. I wish it did!" ~Raphael


"My egg did not break because I had foam around it and the egg was in the middle and it was wrapped around in duct tape and the foam guarded it." ~Rudy

"My egg didn't break during the egg toss because I made sure that it was safely wrapped. Also because I made sure I didn't slam it to the ground." ~Shantae

"I really liked egg dropping. My egg was wrapped perfectly. But I kind of got carried away and threw it hard." ~Keonna


"Today we did an egg drop. It was fun! I put a lot of soft things in my cup, then I put my egg on top and more soft things. I was happy that my egg made it!" ~Gabby

"I don't think my egg cracked because it bounced!!" ~Tomoko

"I thought this was fun. I liked this because we had to come and think of ways for it not to crack. In the end it was the bomb!" ~Esther

"Mine broke because maybe I didn't use enough soft stuff or maybe it was too high to fall. And maybe I need to be more careful!" ~Patrick

Battle of the Bottle Balloons!

Today in Mad Science the kids experimented with some chemistry! In a project dubbed “Bottle Balloons” by the youth, they learned how mixing different ingredients creates carbon dioxide that will cause a balloon to inflate. Read on to find out about what they learned!

“During Mad Science we had soda, lemon juice, water, and vinegar to pour into a bottle. Then in a balloon you put baking soda or Pop Rocks. Then you put the balloon over the bottle and the balloon would start to expand because of the carbon dioxide.” ~Shantae D.

“Hey…this is Courtney! Today we had a battle of the bottle balloons. My group filled our bottle with Sierra Mist. We filled our balloon with Pop Rocks and baking soda. Then we put the balloon with the bottle and the balloon blew up. It was really cool!” ~Courtney N.

“I took the vinegar and the baking soda in the bottle and the balloon grew up. The balloon grew because of carbon dioxide.” ~Jamal O.

“Today we did the Bottle Balloons project. It was fun! We combined Pop Rocks, soda and baking soda. It made a big balloon!” ~Gabby C.

“Today was great. I learned how to make carbon dioxide in a bottle with Pop Rocks, lemon juice and baking soda. The balloon blows up when we mixed everything.” ~Keonna M.