"Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken." Ecclesiastes 4:12
On Saturday, January 16th, we had our first Tricord Club meeting for 2021. Attendance was light since 3 of the children who were scheduled to attend were not able to make it. We hope that more parents can learn about the club so that we have more children at the January 30th meeting.
The room was set up for self-directed leisure. Materials for making bag puppets were on the first table. Pencil boxes with individual supplies for each club member were provided as a COVID-19 precaution. Andrew seemed pleased with the selection of fabrics and yarn and began constructing his puppet while chatting with Laura Hoffpauir, one of our great Core Clubroom Volunteers.
Another table was prepared for children to use their play dough from their individual pencil boxes to create items from the the Bible lesson or the foods from the nutrition discussion. Some pretend tacos appeared.
Moving along to serve others, there was a portion of the meeting when cards were made to be sanitized and sent to senior citizens in a nursing home. We made thumbprint pictures and talked about the uniqueness of each individual. We hope that club members will gain self esteem as they realize that they can make valuable contributions to others.
Kindness rocks were painted and Andrew independently decided that he would like to give one of the rocks that he painted to Vicki Johnson-Cain who graciously volunteered to take these lovely photos for our website and Tricord Club Facebook page. I was excited to see them getting along so well. One of our goals with the club is to help community members and our club members develop networking skills and comfortable natural conversations.
During the Bible study video we learned that God created people in his image and that each person is uniquely made. We had a story emphasizing kindness to others from a book that was generously donated to the club.
We talked about some ways that people communicate with different languages such as French, Amercian sign language, Spanish, etc. Andrew is bilingual so we drew on his knowledge to teach us a Spanish word. We also showed him a phrase in sign language.
Brandon Hebert, Fitness Trainer with the Destrehan Anytime Fitness Center, and Andrew had a "man to man" talk about the value of being physically active, exercising, and eating a variety of healthy nutritious foods.
Our words and attitudes can build barriers or bridges. Both Vicki, our photographer for this meeting, and Brandon were very respectful of our club member and built bridges of commonality to the community. Brandon and Andrew quickly developed rapport and became buddies discussing the food pyramid, healthy food choices, and exercises while making play dough tacos. It was a delight to watch! Andrew even showed Brandon his muscle.
