Hope Learning Services

Program Days Jan 3-7

January 3 – January 7, 2022

Theme: Calendars from around the World

Skill Building: Using Calendars

Person-Centered Thinking & Safety

Monday January 3, 2022

Photo by Djordje Vezilic from Pexels

Today Happens to Be...

Festival of Sleep Day: Are you feeling exhausted after the holidays?
Fruitcake Toss Day: Did your family receive any fruitcakes? Do you like them?

Check In + Show & Share: Happy New Year!

Take some time to describe your new year celebrations:

Who did you celebrate with?
Did you have a virtual countdown with friends in different places?
Where were you when the ball dropped?
What are some goals you are looking forward to achieving this year?

Presenter Note: Feel free to share your own goals or ideas for goals that you'd like to work towards in 2022. Examples of this could be to learn a new skill, practice a foreign language for 10 minutes a date, or read 30 pages every day.

Take this time to share and discuss your goals and anything exciting that happened over your new years weekend!

Theme of the Week

Introduce our theme and skill builder for the week:

Theme: Calendars from around the World
Skill Builder: Using Calendars to Track Dates

This week we are going to explore calendars from around the world. These calendars share similarities and differences. They were used to track holidays in different cultures, seasonal cycles for growing crops, and to identify important dates.

Presenter Note: Review and discuss the calendars from the following resources. Questions can be asked while reviewing the short (4 min) video and/or the Britannica article.

Video: A Short History of The Modern Calendar

Article: Calendars and Their History - Britannica

What were some calendars that you saw in the video?
How were dates measured in the past?
What do you wish we would still use today?
Why were calendars important for cultures?
Which calendar is your favorite?
Which calendar do you think was not good?
How are the calendar different?
How are the calendars similar?

<Body Break>

Skill Builder

Person-Centered Life Planning: Keep Track of Time Past & Present

Calendars are used to keep track of time using specific levels of measurement such as days, months, years, or simply minutes! Many cultures both past and present use calendars every year to celebrate holidays and keep track of important dates both as a community and individually.

What dates or time have you kept track of in the past? If so, how did you do it?
What are some ways you keep track of time?
Why do you think calendars have changed over time ?
What are some ways we can begin to track our dates starting this month?
How do you think we could take some ideas from past calendars and put them into present?
What holiday or date will you track first and why? (Birthday, Halloween, fun day, etc.)

<Body Break>

What did we learn/practice today?

What are we doing this afternoon?

Civics & Community Awareness

Tuesday January 4, 2022

Photo by Jisun Han on Unsplash

Today Happens to Be...

National Trivia Day: Do you like trivia? What's your favorite type of trivia?
54 Fantastic Facts for National Trivia Day: Explore some fun facts that you might get to use in your next trivia game!

Check In

How are you today?
What's this week's theme?
What's this week's skill builder?
What did we do yesterday?

Show & Share: Calendars from My Home or Calendars We Find Online

Share a calendar you have in your home, a calendar you discovered online that we did not talk about yesterday, or which calendar you found the most fascinating from our discussion yesterday!

Thematic Activity:

Which Calendar, Which Culture?

Let's do a quick review of yesterday's activity:

Presenter Note: While reviewing the calendars from yesterday, allow participants to conduct a search for different calendars from different cultures. This activity can also be done as a search and sharing of your screen.

Calendars from the Past to Consider:

We identified that different cultures often used calendars as a way to keep track of important dates and times. These tracking systems were in the form of calendars.

What were some of the things that people tracked in the past?

Now we are going to match calendars with the culture that they belonged to in the past. Bonus points if you can remember how the culture tracked and why!

<Body Break>

Skill Builder:

Holiday's Observed in Hope to Home Program

Presenter Note: Navigate to the attached Hope Services' Holiday Calendar for this activity. Let participants know that this is the calendar that Hope uses to let people know which dates in 2022 that program will not occur.

PDF Download for Zoom Annotation: Hope Services 2022 Holiday Schedule.

While reviewing the Holiday 2022 Calendar what are things we notice?

Are some holidays always celebrated on the same day?
Which holidays are celebrated on the same day?
Which holidays are celebrated on different days each year?
Why is it important to check the date of the holiday if it is not a specific date each year? (For example: Christmas is always December 25th, but Thanksgiving 2020 was November 26th. What day is Thanksgiving in 2022?)

<Body Break>

What did we learn/practice today?

What are we doing this afternoon?

Well Being and Social Connection

Wednesday January 5, 2022

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

Today Happens to Be...

National Whipped Cream Day: Check out some fun recipes and facts about Whipped Cream!
National Bird Day: What's your favorite bird? Do you like to watch or listen to birds?

Check In

How are you today?
What's this week's theme?
What's this week's skill builder?
What did we do yesterday?

Show & Share: Tracking Our Habits

One good way to see how we've developed our skills or learned new skills over time is to track our habits. There are many ways that we can track our habits over time to see our progress.

Presenter Note: The website you can explore offers examples of different ways that some people have tracked their habits in bullet journals. Inform participants that there is no "one way" of tracking habits. Some people use templates or planners and others create their own system for tracking habits.

Article: Bullet Journal Addict: 50 Tracker Ideas for Bullet Journals

What are are some habits you'd like to track?
Which habit tracker looks the coolest?
Which habit tracker would you like to create?
How can we use habit trackers like these in the future?

<Body Break>

Life Skills Stories: Why Keeping Track of Dates is Important

Presenter Note: Review the linked life skill story and ask the questions listed at the end of the story.

Keeping Plans: Three Times the Fun

Covid Mitigation Moment

One of the best ways to mitigate covid? Wash your hands! Review more about handwashing below:

CDC: When and How to Wash Your Hands

Website also has additional languages for participants to review!

Do you remember any other ways to help fight Covid individually?

<Body Break>

What did we learn/practice today?

What are we doing this afternoon?

Rights & Self Advocacy

Thursday January 6, 2022

Today Happens to Be...

Sherlock Holmes' Birthday: Want to learn more about one of the most famous detectives in history? Explore Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's description of Sherlock!

Check In

What have you been thinking about?
What's this week's theme?
What's this week's skill builder?
What did we do yesterday?

Show & Share: Our Important Dates

What are some dates important to you? Today we are going to share examples of dates and describe why they are important to us.

Presenter Note: Allow participants to share their unique celebrations with photos, examples of their creations, or personal descriptions. Questions below can be used to guide the show and share for today.

Questions for Participants:

What date do you celebrate?
Why is this date important to you?
Are you celebrating yourself or someone (or a pet)?
How do you celebrate? Is there a special food or item you create?

<Body Break>

Theme Activity: More Important, Sort of Important, Less Important

Presenter Note: Share that you are going to review different holidays or dates that occur each year and the participants are going to have the opportunity to vote with Zoom annotation on if they consider the holiday more important or less important. Engage participants if they voted for important or not important.

For this activity, we will use Zoom to vote on which date we think is more important or less important. After each round, participants can answer the questions below and explain why they voted the way that they did.

More Important, Less Important Link

Presenter Note: Remember to click on the "Slideshow" button to view the slideshow in fullscreen.

Explore the holidays (some well known and some you might not know!)

Questions for Participants:

Why did you vote for that day to be more important?
Why is that day less important to you?

<Body Break>

What did we learn/practice today?

What are we doing this afternoon?

Knowledge & Fun

Friday January 7, 2022

Today Happens to Be...

Old Rocks Day: Rocks might seem like a boring thing to celebrate, but rocks have been important to humans throughout history! Humans use rocks for marking locations and crafting tools. Let's check out 23 Incredible Natural Rock Formations.

Check In

Do you have any plans or hopes for the weekend?
What's this week's theme?
What's this week's skill builder?
What did we do yesterday?

<Body Break>

Weekly Review

Presenter Note: Do a quick run down or review of this week's topics with participants.

General questions:

What did we do this week? What did we learn?
What did you like most this week?

Specific questions:

What calendars did we explore?
Why is tracking on our calendars important for us to do?
How/What are some things we can track on our own calendars/portfolio?
Which calendar did you find the most fascinating, or coolest? Why was that calendar so cool to you?

<Body Break>

Bullet Journals

Who knows what a bullet journal (or BuJo) is?
Can you describe bullet journaling for your group?
Does anyone here bullet journal?

Here are some links where you can learn more:

Here are some discussion questions:

What are different pieces of a bullet journal?
What are some things you can use a bullet journal to track?
What's helpful about bullet journaling?
What do you think is coolest about bullet journaling?
Are any of you inspired to start bullet journaling now?

Next Week

Our theme next week is planning styles. We'll learn how we can use different planning styles to help us make our own plans and track our goals.

Presenter Note: If time allows, discuss these questions as a group. Otherwise, simply ask participants to start thinking about these questions over the weekend.