Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

May 4: 9:30-3:30, Norwich Cathedral, Supervised by Juliet Corbett

Today I got to participate in The Creation! That’s sort of a big deal.

I got to work closely with Juliet, which was awesome because when I volunteered at the Cathedral before I didn’t get to see her very often because she was so busy. She and I, along with one other volunteer who took the groups on tours of the Cathedral, worked with two groups of children- one which consisted of kids ages 4 to7 and one of kids 8 to11- to tell them the story of The Creation in a way which they could easily understand. Mary would take one group on a tour of the Cathedral while Juliet and I did a crafts project with the other group.

First we took the kids to the Herb Garden where they got to look at all of the different herbs and cut off pieces to use in a craft project later. When we got back to the room, Juliet would tell the story of The Creation with visual aids and would then explain the activity, which involved gluing things of their creation to a large backdrop consisting of a land- and seascape. We helped children, then, as they created the animals and plants to be part of the world of their creation. It was actually amazingly fun. I really got in touch with my inner child: when we had a free moment I made a tiger out of felt. I’m pretty proud of its artistic merit.

The kids, who were great fun, came with their teacher and some parent volunteers all the way from Diss. The teacher made the effort to get to know things about me and even asked if I was planning to go into teaching. The children also were very curious about who I was (particularly because of my accent) and really enjoyed telling me about themselves.

Unfortunately, because of British law, I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of the activity because it involved children so I had to settle with using the image from the Cathedral’s website about community learning.

Photo courtesy of Norwich Cathedral (http://www.cathedral.org.uk/learning/community-learning-introduction-.aspx)

Photo courtesy of Norwich Cathedral (http://www.cathedral.org.uk/learning/community-learning-introduction-.aspx)

After volunteering I, once again, got to experience a side of the Cathedral that most people don’t get to see: Juliet took me to look at (and play with) some really old Bibles. One was from 1536 and another was supposedly the Bible on which Queen Victoria was sworn in!! It’s obvious that volunteering opens the door to all kinds of cool experiences that I could never anticipate!