This week I finally got to begin my volunteering. I arrived at The Peak for 8:45 AM and was met by Craig who took me in to the hall where the event was taking place. I then helped some of the staff with equipment and brought this into the hall. To begin with I felt a little nervous as I’d never really helped at such an event before. But once I got started I felt at ease.

I was put in a group with an Active Schools Coordinator from Falkirk. In my group there was 9 children. This group started off at Boccia. This was a new sport for me to learn and was good to see it being played. I picked up quickly on this and then I got the offer of refereeing a game. This involved me having a red and blue cone and when it was blues turn I held up the blue cone so that the children knew when to go. I had fun doing this but at times I found it difficult to decide which ball was closer to the white ball.

The next activity my group moved onto was badminton. The children were split into two groups. One group played games of badminton while the other group played target practice. There were a series of hula hoops set out and the children had to try and get balls and shuttlecocks in the hoop. A couple of the older boys got bored of the target practice after a while so I then gave them a challenge and told them what hoop to aim for.

After this my group then moved onto swimming. Whilst the group were taking part I just observed as there wasn’t much I could do. The children were in the water with Active Stirling staff and swimming teachers.

The next activities were football and athletics. The football started off as drills and then moved onto a game. Then when the children moved onto athletics they worked on three different aspects: running, throwing and jumping. The first activity was hurdles which involved them running and jumping over obstacles. Then the throwing involved throwing a ball, throwing a bean bag and then moved onto throwing a javelin. Some of the children could throw the javelin really far even managing to hit the back wall. Then the final session was jumping so the children jumped on a mat and got to measure how far they could jump.

Then after lunch the activities were climbing and curling. The children got the chance to climb up and down the climbing wall. Some were slightly nervous about doing this but they all gave it a good shot. This was cut short as the children were running out of time. They then got a short time curling. This involved them having the chance to use a stick to try push the curling stones to see how far they could get it.

I enjoyed being able to watch different activities and learn some new things. In the next event or session I would like to get more involved.