What are your CAS activities

[hermine0817]

Creativity:

Piano playing (gives you about 20 hours per month)

MUN (about 4 hours per month?)

Chess (rather irregular, but when there's competition against other schools)

Action:

Tennis (solid 6 hours per month)

Badminton (varies... I don't do it regularly)

Service:

Peace Studies (about 4-6 hours per month)

Choir (it may count halfly as creativity, but as the purpose is money-rasing, it counts as service as well. Gives me around 12 hours per month)

It's really not that hard to collect the hours, I already have over the required 50 hours.

Plus when you have something like the Big MUN Conference (usually for three days), you get something like 25 hours on row.

When I have my choir travel (which is around a week), that gives you like 60 hours on row.

So really not hard at all for me.

I haven't included guitar playing in the CAS diary, because else it would take me ages to write it, and I am also considering going swimming regulary in summer.

Edited March 25, 2009 by hermine0817

[Lynard]

well in my school for service we

help kids with reading and their homeworks

help the aged that is help in the cleaning of their houses

we also go to help in cleaning our community!!!!!

[HelenaStage]

Hey, I am in Pre-IB this year, going on to IB next year, and I have been wondering whether individual activities such as drawing and painting (Creativity), running in the forest (Action) and maybe working as a volunteer in a shop where any excess capital goes to charity (Service) would actually count. Or would I have to join some kind of club/organization for it to be valid?

Edited April 11, 2009 by HelenaStage

[hermine0817]

Hey, I am in Pre-IB this year, going on to IB next year, and I have been wondering whether individual activities such as drawing and painting (Creativity), running in the forest (Action) and maybe working as a volunteer in a shop where any excess capital goes to charity (Service) would actually count. Or would I have to join some kind of club/organization for it to be valid?

It doesn't necessarily have to be some club/organization activity. You can do it very well on your own as well. My predecessors for instance jogged a lot and they of course did it alone. But you should show proofs that you ahve actually completed these activities. You have to show them a picture of you jogging and so on.

But you should keep in mind that when you start a CAS activity, you have to fill out a form first where you have to write things like what your activity is, for what discipline of CAS it would count, and who your supervisor would be. There you also have to give an e-mail address or phone number of your supervisor so that your CAS coordinator can check up in case something looks suspicious or made up. (Someone saying that he/she jogged for 7 hours a day would seem suspicious for instance.)

But your supervisor doesn't have to be with you the whole time when you are collecting CAS hours.

I do piano playing for my Creativity and I also count the practice hours to the CAS even though I am only with my teacher when I do lessons with her. Therefore, she is my supervisor, but she is not "supervising" me for every single CAS hour I'm doing.

In conclusion, you can do CAS activities on your own, but you need a supervisor (who doesn't always have to be with you when you are doing your CAS activities.)

[Tilia]

Action: Running

Creativity: Playing in orchestras

Service: Been doing Amnesty, doesn't have anything right now

Edited April 22, 2009 by Tilia

[Bend444]

i find cas to be ok.. the service offered from our school is that all the final year students go on a camp with different year groups within the school and we get quite a lot of hours for that. There is also being involved in our schools fashion show which raises money for child cancer and yea those are the two main service providers the school gives us.

[exploretheworld]

Creativity:

streetdance, blog, school magazine, IB magazine, helping out at brownies, graphics making... and others

Action:

House sport, basketball... and more

Service:

geography booster classes, brownies, brownie camp, blog... and more

I love CAS it gives me a chance to get out the house, and I was used to doing those activities before anyway since I did the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award, so it meant just carrying things on.

[milkberry]

Well at my school CAS can be done outside of school or in school. I did Cheerleading which counted as Creativity and Action. Ultimate for just Action and Student Council for Service and Creativity. In one year I had more than 150 hours.

[sweetnsimple786]

i find cas to be ok.. the service offered from our school is that all the final year students go on a camp with different year groups within the school and we get quite a lot of hours for that. There is also being involved in our schools fashion show which raises money for child cancer and yea those are the two main service providers the school gives us.

that sounds like fun! unless I guess you don't like your peers too much... that might be a problem hehe

There's an organization called Habitat for Humanity where groups can sign up to go somewhere the organization is active (pretty widespread throughout the US) and literally help build a house for a poor family. All of the materials are from the organization, so it's like helping a family own its own house. The family works with you to build it and then they get it. It's an amazing experience and it's pretty popular for CAS at our school.

[emmak]

I'm getting jealous here, reading about all of the activities that your schools provide! I lived in America for 11 years where I did SO many things with the school: marching band, symphonic band, pep band, tech crew, art club, etc. Now I'm in Finland in the IB, and my school has NOTHING that you could participate in for CAS! I've been hearing that Finnish schools don't do a lot of extracurriculars or sports teams WITH the school, everything is done on your own. Any other Finns here that feel the same?! My school here in Turku has no sports teams, no art clubs, basically nothing.

Action:going to the gym every so often.

Creative: translations for the international school, writing an article for the (one-yearly!) school newspaper

Service: French exchange where I hosted a student for a week

If anyone has ideas for projects that I could complete by myself, it would be appreciated!

[balloon]

Creativity:

- Choir

- Cast in school Production

- Shakespeare Festival

- Organization of High school dance and trivia night

- Duke of Ed skills introduction course (i.e. tying ropes)

- Cello Lessons

- Latin lessons

- Public Speaking Tournament

- Miniature movie competition

- Organization and menu making for a service trip

Action:

- Basketball

- Pilates

- Horse Riding lessons

- Horse riding camps

- Ballet

- Walk-a-thon's

- Cross-country competitions

- Team Sports

- Adventure Camp

Service:

- Nursing home visits

- Elderly companionship

- School holidays Kid's Club

- School production crew

- Service Trip cook

- Wrap with Love (knitting blankets for poor people in other countries)

[NAD]

there are a number of activities that you can do. soccer, basketball, baseball.. creativity.. art, cooking, photo,.. service.. helping disable kids, giving food to homeless people.. etc

[Darko]

you can do Model united nations and it counts as both creativity and service.

[bohemian03]

Creativity:

piano lessons

high school musical

middle school musical

high school play

writing for a newspaper

singing group

voice lessons

action:

tanzania trip (a lot of hard physical work )

carrying boxes onto trucks

service:

tanzania trip

helping sell books

MUN

going to talk to the old folks home

helping sell school supplies

bake sale to raise money

talent show to raise money

[Cynthia]

Now I'm in Finland in the IB, and my school has NOTHING that you could participate in for CAS! I've been hearing that Finnish schools don't do a lot of extracurriculars or sports teams WITH the school, everything is done on your own. Any other Finns here that feel the same?! My school here in Turku has no sports teams, no art clubs, basically nothing.

I agree with this and I guess it does make CAS a bit harder... I don't really find it that bad though, I'm going to lead a movie club sort of thing and we're also getting together a delegation for EYP, so if you and your classmates share some interests it's quite easy to start something like that.

Anyway, what I'm planning to do

Creativity:

Movie club

Making a horror movie with my classmates

Playing the piano

Learning Spanish

Action:

Dancing

Yoga

Wallclimbing

Horseback riding

Service:

Organisation work for around 300 h total

IB information to 9th graders, including making an IB brochure for my school's program

A homework club for immigrant children

Tutoring

A camp about human relationships etc

European Youth Parliament

Edited May 13, 2009 by Cynthia

[emmak]

Cynthia, what's this movie club that you're doing for Creativity? That sounds like fun, but what kind of things are you including? I'm getting together with some friends to try to start something together... but the only thing we have in common is that we like to knit and/or crochet. How many people do you think we need to gather for that to be considered a "club"?!

[Bishup]

Me and a friend have thought of a wonderful thing to do for CAS next year.

I am going to teach a friend and possibly other mates that decide to come to my lessons, Russian for Service.

And then my friend gets Creativity hours.

Then he, as he is German, will teach me German and in return I will earn Creativity hours.

I just figured this was a nice idea and I know this won't be enough to cover all the required hours but at least it will be a fruitful experience.

Edited May 15, 2009 by Bishup

[Vvi]

For my service hours I picked olives, although I'm not sure other people are able to do that unless they live in the Middle East. The olives went to a hospital that processed them and sold them, then used the money it generated to pay for free operations for people that couldn't afford it.

I was also in a Rotary youth club which coordinated activity days for children in the Palestinian territories; we organized two activity days for an orphanage and a handicapped children's home. They were fun, and even though I hardly speak Arabic I still played with the kids. I think all countries, or almost all, have Rotary clubs, so it's worth finding out if they have a Rotary Interact club (the one for youths) in your town.

I got all my Creativity hours from extra language classes, I took Hebrew after school. Also went on a 4 week French language course over the summer in Paris. And I did MUN for 2 years in a row.

[Cynthia]

Cynthia, what's this movie club that you're doing for Creativity? That sounds like fun, but what kind of things are you including? I'm getting together with some friends to try to start something together... but the only thing we have in common is that we like to knit and/or crochet. How many people do you think we need to gather for that to be considered a "club"?!

We haven't really thought of it in detail yet but what we will probably do is watch 7-8 classics, maybe from different European countries or something like that, then discuss them together and after watching all of them our Finnish A1 teacher is going to have a group conversation with us to sort of debrief. Our IB class is very small so it will most likely be just 5-7 of us.

You could probably do something with knitting, our CAS coordinator was talking about some thing where they'd send clothes to developing countries... So you could find something like that or even organise one yourself for a lot of hours.

Also a good way to get service hours in Finland is your local SLL piiri or then joining the FIBS board, people tend to take 200+ hours from that...

[herong2x]

well so far my CAS activities are:

Action:

Body Attack

Creativity:

Cupcake making

Service:

Night market, entrepreneurship bazaar, service at CARD (center for autism and related disorders), 3 medical and dental

mission

and the rest, its just a combination of all which are the CAS Camps 1 and 2, we went to zambales and boracay

for the summer, im planning to finish up my 50 hours for action and creativity by learning german, boxing, yoga,

ice skating, learning how to play guitar and probably learnig how to bake