Service seems to be the hardest one, but I have some tips. You can bring a large trash bag to any public park, put on your headphones, listen to music (or a podcast), and pick up trash for a few hours.

Kumar

Making cookies with siblings (You can teach others for service, or create your own recipes for creativity), walking your or your neighbor’s dogs, shoveling your or others driveways and walks, hang out with your grandparents, read to them, make dinner with them, look at old photos with them.

Helen

Joining a sports team will give you plenty of activity hours. Any other physical activity is great as it is healthy and you get your hours in. Also, for additional creativity hours you could always join the City Voice!

Jonathan

As a 7th grader, this was my first year at City Middle School and the concept of CAS hours was originally foreign to me. But now that we’re more than a full semester into the school year and with the help of the teachers and staff at City, it’s making a lot more sense. For those of us who are trying to get as many more hours as we can, while we’re still in school, here are a couple of tips: For creativity hours, it can be anything that you enjoy doing that gets your brain going. For example, I enjoy playing the violin and debating which can be added to my creativity hours. Now, the activity hours take a bit more physical strength. Running (at home or socially distanced), yoga, or anything of this sort are all candidates for the activity section. And last but not least, we have our service hours. This includes anything good that you can do for your community and even though volunteering at the Kid’s Food Basket might not be safe during the pandemic, you can do something as simple as shovel the snow for a neighbor. There are also multiple volunteering opportunities for teens, online, like TeensGive and Translators without Borders, just to name a few. Another tip for efficiency is to keep an updated Google Spreadsheet with all of your hours, so that when the time comes, you know what you did and you can easily add more activities/hours. And remember, these are just a couple suggestions and tips, so go ahead and come up with your own ideas as well. I wish you the best of luck for the rest of the school year!

Krishna

1. Creativity- Drawing ; Check out WMCAT!

2. Activity- Sledding- Go to Union Hill or Richmond Hill

3. Service – Shovel Driveways

Romy

A quick way to get some service hours during winter is to shovel some snow. Driveways, sidewalks, or anything of the sort will work. You can spread to process out over a couple of days to make it easier.

Sebastian

A great way to get service hours at home would be to help around the house with chores and cleaning! By doing this, you can both keep your house tidy and make an effort towards completing your CAS requirements as well!

Sophia

For service hours, I go and join non-profit organizations that I would really enjoy and use the time we have for meetings for my service hours. For creativity, I play a lot of instruments, so I just pick up a few, practice them for a bit, and rack up many hours of creativity like that. Instruments are fun to play and give you CAS hours! As for activity, I take scheduled 1-2 hour walks outside. I just walk to the park and walk around with my headphones in, listening to music and before you know it, you’ve already got like 2 hours!

Sparsh

One way to get service hours is to tutor younger students. It’s a great way to help others, improve communication skills, and review material that you might have learnt a long time ago.

Vishnu

For service especially, I recommend contacting hospitals, children’s hospitals, veteran’s homes, or nursing homes to volunteer to read or do something virtually with them. These areas are really limited on social interactions and visitors right now, so they may or may not welcome the offer. Another idea for students is to organize a family/friend food drive with people they are in contact with and then donate the food to one of the local pantries or someone they know is in need. You can also sort out old clothes and toys and donate them to the homeless shelters or organizations that can get them to people that need them. Do a blanket/sock drive in your neighborhood and donate those things to shelters, and tutoring services are vital right now.

Mrs. McCumber-Austin