We're Back!!!

Second semester is in full swing and we’ve jumped right back into our Harmony House service project.

We completed our first movie night on February 23. Before the movie night we were about to meet with Ivy, the Harmony House volunteer coordinator. This was a great opportunity to catch up with her and run some future ideas by her. We discussed and reflected on how successful each of our events were last semester and then talked about the possibility of putting our other ideas into action.

At our movie night we watched “Mamma Mia.” It was definitely the biggest movie night we’ve had so far. The childcare had 14 kids! Everyone seemed to really enjoy the musical. The women all said that they needed a break and they were glad we had the movie night set up for them.

One idea we want to try to implement is a drum circle. Drum circles are pretty popular in the music therapy department and Mu Theta. They can be very relaxing and we would love to be able to host an event that the moms can participate in and de-stress. We would still provide childcare because drum circles are still pretty structured and we think the kids would get tired of it pretty fast. Ivy’s concern, though, was the noise level. We are hoping to do the event in April and that way we could go outside on the playground and do it. That may also be a good way to get the kids out of the playroom and exerting some more of their energy.

Something we may try to change for the future is creating a stricter rule about dropping kids off for childcare. While a lot of the moms came down to watch the movie, some left and did other things. We understand they need a break but there may not be enough of us to properly care for the amount of kids in the playroom.

One thing we’ve really excelled at is creating positive relationships with the staff. It’s really great to meet a variety of the staff and explain to them our project. We also have our other volunteer dates set in stone, so it feels nice to be ahead of schedule.