Philipines Bake Sale

Philipines Bake Sale

This was a cake sale organised at our school to raise some money for the typhoon that devasted some areas in Philippines, we wanted to do our part so we thought we could try and raise some money by baking cakes and selling pieces in our school. So our form tutor organised this and we all set off to bake some cakes. This activity was partially creativity due to the baking that was involved, however also partially service, due to us trying to help raise money that would aid people in need in the Philippines and cause us to further our creative abilities in baking.

Objectives

For this activity I was only thinking of two things, to get everyone together to do this and have a smoothly running sale and to raise as much money for the Philippines as we could. I just wanted to do my part for the charity and the people that were in such desperate need. Also this helped me develop my baking abilities that I had learnt in the great Ashcroft bake off.

Reflection

So on that day in break we set out to have everything done and dusted. We all brought in cakes and they were looking apertising. The first part was to get everyone together to sell these cakes, which was a success, after that we had quite a good load of customers wanting cake, so we were selling quite well. We all worked as hard and fluently as we could to get as much money in as we could and raised the most money that we were able to in that time frame. At first sales were slow, however throughout the break it picked up a lot and we started selling quite a bit I must say. We raised a respectable amount of money for the people in philippines that I am sure did not make that big an impact on the whole campaign of aid, however I noticed with this the importance of the bigger picture. It is important that everyone did their part, and it does not matter that our part to this campaign may have been small, because if there would be more smaller campaigns it adds up and this is due to everyone doing there single part in helping others. This is what I learnt from people I have gotten to know who live and work in germany, not everyone works insanely hard, however everyone tries to do their part, this is important for success in anything. In this case it was important for the aid of people less fortunate to us and I was happy that we did our part to help them.

Photo Competition

Photo competition

This was a competition that was organised at our school for us to take part in. Here I was interested in it because it would perfectly fit into my CAS part of creativity, due to me having to start thinking about planning of the shot, the different possibilities, the different ways in which I could take the shot, the lighting. So I then set out to take a good shot and I was already imagining my shot in my head. I was going to do it against the sunset I knew that much at least.

Objectives

I had three main goals for this project, the first of which was to create a nice looking photo that did have a chance of winning and then the second was to win a prize for my photo that I entered. This I thought was plausible for myself as I thought the shot I was imagining could have a chance of winning if it was done correctly. So I set out to also organize and plan the shot for the competition. My idea was to take a skating or a bmx photo against the sunset, here lighting was incredibly crucial.

Reflection

One evening my friend and I went out to a place near the thames. Our photos were going to enter the sport category because they were of skateboarding and bmxing. My idea was to do a form of trick against the sunset and get a nice contrast. This was harder than I thought it would be, because getting the photo at the correct moment and angle was so difficult. However in the end we managed to get the photo after all and we did manage to get a good shot so I can tick that off my list. So we managed two of my goals and entered it then to the comp. However we entered it under the wrong name so we got disqualified, this meant we did not receive a prize.This made me feel dissapointed, I could not be angry though, as it was my own stupidity, however made me learn to take better care the next time we enter something. Also my idea of taking the photo against the sunset backfired, as I picked a place where I thought I could get the sunset nicely into the photo, however two things backfired here. The place was correct because the sun was facing the right way, however we had a dense tree line cover the actual beauty of the sunset, in addition the sunset did not last long and we messed up our timing. Although it was a failure in one sense, the whole activity actually helped me appreciate art in a certain way, now I noticed what photographers have to do, what they have to put up with, weather, lighting, timing, it really takes patience to get the shot you want. So I have won a sense of appreciation of the photos we see.

 

Ice Skating

Ice Skating

This was a group planned activity just before we broke up for christmas holidays. This was planned for our CAS programme so that we could try a new activity and learn a new skill. Until then I had only Ice Skated a few times, however I expected to pick up the skill fairly quickly, so I was excited to go on this trip. This activity I saw as part of the action part of CAS. This is because of the physical skill needed to ice skate and as what we were doing was not that physically hard, it did take concentration and physical skill to learn.

Objectives

My first objective for this trip was obviously to further my Ice Skating abilities and really just learn the skill. I wanted to be able to learn how to ice skate fluently. After I had learned that I thought that it would be good for me to learn other kinds of skills of ice skating as going backwards and doing a 180 turn and stopping. All these things I was hoping to learn on this trip and was eager to get started.

Assesment

To my surprise I noticed that I was able to pick up the skill of ice skating fairly quickly and was able to move around the rink in no time and without any difficulties. I then learnt how to slow down which was easy for me as one only had to drag ones right or left foot along the ice to start slowing down and eventually stopping. After this I then started learning the next move. This was my biggest surprise, I managed a 180 in the first three tries and then after that I could do them fairly consistently at relatively low speeds. However I did not manage to learn how to fluently travel backwards on my skates. I was really surprised how quickly I picked up the ice skating skill, however I linked this to my part of skating that I do and roller blading that I used to do a few years back, I noticed how much different activities link in to each other and how one can transcribe physical skills that you learnt once before onto other sports. I noticed the muscle memory that I had had from roller blading a few years back sticked with me, it was like learning to ride a bike, once you had learnt it, it did not really leave you. this made me think about other things like the skating I was doing, as I normally am put off trying to learn totally new things, however now I have a different mindset about it, so I thought about surfing and snowboarding, it really opened many doors to me noticing this and I appreciated the activity for this and therefore that it was a total success, also in bringing everyone together and doing an activity together, it was quite a bonding activity as one had to help each other out to learn new skills and really further ones ability, that is really what I enjoyed, receiving and giving help.

Beach Volleyball

Beach Volleyball

I decided to start playing beach volleyball because I used to play inside volleyball and a friend asked me to partner up with him. So i decided to start going to training on fridays and going to matches on saturdays. This was part of the action part of my CAS due to the physical skill and fittness needed for the activity, also it was a committment to give up my Friday and Saturday afternoons up for training and matches, which were already busy times for me, however I thought it was do-able and reasonable.

Objectives

Here I had two main objectives, my first was to improve my volleyball skills with my partner and work collaboratively with him. My second of which was to come first in one of the matches sometime.
These two were two fairly reasonable objectives I set myself and I think I have a good chance of even fulfilling the second one.

Reflection

I have been able to attend training and have even been playing off training with my partner to get as much training in as possible. I believe I improved my volleyball skills, however it was a lot harder picking it up than I thought. I used to play inside volleyball for my old school, this was 6 aside volleyball and that is all I knew. I thought that Beach Volleyball would be pretty much the same, however there were more differences than I thought before I started. Firstly it is only 2 aside which I knew before, however when the ball is coming your way the first touch is not aloud to be over your head, it has to be struck from beneath or by a kick or header or something of that sort. This annoyed me as in inside volleyball one had the possibility to take it over ones head and this made it a lot easier. However one had to plan a lot more due to the lack of players on the field. Also the amount of fitness needed was insane. I really struggled keeping up, the strain on your neck from always following the ball, the intense headache from the raging heat and the amount of concentrating needed. The running around in sand to cover a lot of distance due to no other plays other than your partner. I really did struggle in the beginning it was very intense, it was like an epic battle between two sides, seeing which would lose control first, a real standoff. The matches were insane, us playing match after match, really taking a beating by players that have been playing for several years or even decades, the amount of control they had was really outstanding and astounded me. We only got 7th place in the tournament which to be honest, did not dissapoint me, the amount of effort we put in and what we got out of it was really outstanding and I think its a good achievement looking back at the amount of time the other players had played. Although I did not reach my second goal, I do not think the activity was a failure, I think I underestimated it when I first planned the activity, however I really did further myself and I enjoyed it a lot. What the best part was the friendship one built up with ones partner, this was by facing adversity together and helping each other, playing as one and really understand the moves of the other and adjusting to them, it really made me build up a good friendship with my partner and I feel like that is the most positive thing that came out of this whole activity.

Climbing

Climbing Trip

Recently we planned a climbing trip and visited a climbing hall in london. This trip was designed to give us a taste of an activity we could undertake. So we visited the climbing hall and had a little lesson in climbing. We then climbed a variety of walls to give us a taste of what we could do in the future. This activity was a action activity due to its physical strength needed to fulfill, however also it takes real skill to fulfill.

Objectives

Here my objectives were to try every course which was set up for me and try and fulfill it, in addition try some of the trickier routes. I also wanted analyse my climbing ability to access where my strengths and where my weaknesses lay.

Reflection

To conclude I must say that I think that I fulfilled my objectives I set out for myself. When we were climbing I attemtped and normally managed to fulfill the climbing routes given to me. However when we got to the bouldering it was a different matter. Sometimes the routes were so advanced that the starting possisions for myself were near impossible to start in. This caused me later to stop trying these routes because one needed such advanced grip strength to manage these routes that I did not even try them later. For my second objective I neded to access my strengths and weaknesses. So I noticed that while climbing I had quite good body strength to keep up with the climbing, however what I was lacking was the intense grip needed to hold onto certain grips that were in such awkward positions. All in all I think I managed my objectives and look forward to climbing more often at this climbing hall.

Continuation

Description

After our first climbing trip organised by our CAS coordinater, I decided to continue to pursue the activity and continue to climb at white spider. This again as described before is part of my action activities as it takes a lot of strength, agility and skill to achieve certain routes. However I wanted to further my climbing abilities, as before we were guided by instructed and they did our safety, however I wanted to set out and learn the safety myself and climb independently. I was going to visit the hall once a week, at most due to me having to pay £11 for each visit, which was a lot for me. So I set out to plan my objectives for the activity.

Objectives

My first objective was to be able to climb independantly this involved learning how to safety myself to the climbing end, learning how to belay someone and amking safety checks and assessments while climbing. My next objective was to start climbing the routes as before I just took any hold on the wall, however I wanted to start just climbing routes which really would increase the difficulty. These were my plans for the next few weeks and I was certain that I would fulfill them.

Reflection

I set out quite optimistically onto my quest of climbing. Firstly I set out to learn the safety skills that were involved. I had two options, to either pay for a course or to learn it off youtube, looking at my limited money resources I chose the latter. I looked at the knots involved, took a piece of rope at home and started practicing them, they all seemed simple enough and I picked up the safety skills quite quickly. The next part was starting to climb and actually sign up to the climbing hall. This I did with a good friend of mine, we set out on our epic quest finally, driving there I felt sort of nervous for the test they gave one for the safety checks as I had never really done them with real equipment, however I had only seen it before and knew the theory, now it was time for me to prove myself in practice. We went in and paid for the session, then they took me through the safety test and I passed without any errors, was easier than I expected, the theory seemed easy enough to play out in practice. So we had passed my first objectives which excited me, now we had to move on to the actual climbing, we gather our harnesses and our other equipement and started at one wall with a more easier route. We got set up and started the route, the route itself was easy enough and I felt competent, this gave me confidence, so we started to move on to other routes, all the routes on that day were pretty straight forward and I managed them, after that we did some boldering for some fun and we did not take it that serious as we had climbed for two hours before that. This first session gave me confidence however I was about to see that not all was that easy. The next time I visited, was with another friend, however he was a more experienced climber, so I was excited to see how I would cope. Again we started with a more simple route and my compitence seemed to keep up. However we then moved on to a more experienced route. He started it out and it looked simple, I started preparing myself mentall for the climb, however I did not think much of it, it looked straight forward. I then started the route, I got half way up and I thought, this is not that bad, but then I looked up and I saw this massive reach, I just looked down and saw my friend laugh. By this time my arms were aching already, my legs were squeezing for hold and my fingers were giving way, I was sweating and it obstructed partially my view, it was a big reach, almost a jump, however I had to try it, I asked my partner to loosen the rope a little to give me more room to move. I felt the rope loosen and then I pressed down with my right foot and started an epic leap of faith for this puny little hold I had to land on. I saw it, through my hand onto it, I thought i had it in the bag but I felt my hand lose grip, I looked to the left to get my other hand somewhere, or my foot, I scrambled for something, but it was too late, I lost grip and just fell a good 2 metres before the rope caught me. This was my first fall in climbing and it was exhilarating. I tried this route again for the next few weeks however until now have not been able to make that leap, however I am not going to give up, I will manage. This is what I learnt in clmbing, no matter how tired you are, you have to reach for that last bit of strength to grab anything possible and hold on, it really takes courage and its amazing what one can achieve with the amount of fatigue one feels. This is was I loved about the activity, I feel it was a success due to me realizing that and appreciating smaller things, every single advance was to be appreciated and it was nice.