Running club
I'm not exactly sure if this on counts as a weekly activity or not, but for most of the year I've been attending running club every Monday. It's probably the best way to end the worst day of the week. I can't say that I loved it when I started, but I do now. I look forward to sweating and trying to beat the previous distances. The reason why I mentioned that I'm not sure if it counts is because I did take a fairly long break (one and a half months) during winter when it was much too cold outside to run. I did a reflection post just before that. Whether or not it counts as a weekly activity, I've definitely seen progress and I can't wait to further improve.
Yoga practices
I've actually been practicing yoga for around a year now, but it was more based on when I was in the mood for it that committing to doing it in a regular way. At the beginning of the school year, I decided that CAS would finally be my motivation to start doing yoga sessions regularly and possibly actually seeing results. At the start, I set myself some goals that I wanted to work towards including stretching my splits (and finally achieving all three: left, right and middle) and to achieve crow pose. When it comes to achieving them, I'm not seeing as much improvement as with running which annoys me. I knew that it would be more difficult to stretch out muscles which I haven't done in a long time than to improve my stamina, but it feels very demotivating at time. The only thing that keeps me going and coming back to the mat each week or two is that I genuinely love doing it.
Piano lessons and daily practice
I've always loved music and as a young child, I attended choir (religiously) and took guitar lessons. I had to give both of these up a few years ago and after a longer break, I didn't go back. Instead, I decided to try playing piano and I've never looked back. I absolutely love learning new pieces, no matter how difficult they are, and even practicing simple scales. I've learned so much in the past few months that I've been attending regular lessons and I have seen huge improvements. The biggest is in my ability to sight read sheet music. While I used to sit in front of a piece and take around 2 minutes to work out each note, now I am able to read them almost instantly. (Emphasis on the word 'almost'.) I still struggle with naming each note quickly (C, D, E...), but going straight from paper to the keys is increasingly easy. Despite this, seeing the improvement honestly feels incredible. I always find myself longing to play to perfect each measure and correct the intonations.
Helping with homework club
Helping lower school children (Year 3 to Year 6) with their homework has been the biggest surprise that I've encountered on my CAS journey. I though it would be fairly easy to teach and explain simply concepts to young children, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only is their knowledge (obviously) limited, but so is their attention span. Many of the pupils give up very quickly when they do not understand how to solve a problem and have no intention of returning to it. My favourite thing about the whole experience, other than the moments when I can actually teach the kids something, is that they treat me like a teacher. It still surprises me every time they refer to me as 'Miss' or 'Miss Aleksandra'. It has also made me understand how difficult the job of a teacher is, especially when one has to deal with such children everyday. Despite the challenges, I have enjoyed going to homework club every week since September.
More detailed posts about each activity are coming soon...
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