Happy Friday y'all! Welcome to the first blog of Summer 2025! I'm Mable, and I'll be your media manager for the summer! A little about me is that I love art and graphic design, and I'm very silly (so expect a lot of jokes). I'm happy to have this job and can't wait to tell you about the MARVELous (I'm legally required to put this in at least once) summer we'll be having here at Upward Bound.

It was a rainy week here in Salem but that didn't deter us from having fun, even if it did shift our plans a little. Thankfully, or unfortunately, the hardest rain hit while we were moving in. The Harrison kids got lucky and got their stuff without a drop of rain, the rest of the kids not so much. :(

Day 1: SA Olympics

We started the week with the SA Olympics! All of the SA's set up an activity and the groups rotated through them, trying to stack up as many points as they could before Tiffany sounded the horn to rotate! We had to strategize, engineer, run, stack, and act our way to victory.

What was each activity you may ask? Well, let me tell ya. First up, Shayla brought a engineering challenge to the games. Students were tasked with building a tower out of raw spaghetti noodles and marshmallows, and was rewarded points based on who got it the highest.

Next up, Christian (AKA Chris, Chippy, or Chuck if you're me)! With his game, students had to test their teamwork abilities by holding a stretchy rope on two sides and rolling a ball down it. They got one point if they got it to the person on the other end, but the real challenge was getting it in the cup in the center, which rewarded 5 points instead.

The next challenge students had to face was brought to us by Mykaela! Better be good at acting cause it was a game of charades! Students had to act out the prompt given on the card. If guessed correctly by their peers, the team received a point.

Izaiah's challenge had the students keeping their eyes peeled, searching for small objects in a scavenger hunt! With a total of 29 items to find in a small radius, the students had to move fast and stick together to seek out the objects. Each item found gave the students a point each.

In front of the gym, we had Brooklyn and her teamwork based cup stacking. Students had to work together to use a rubber band to grab the red solo cup and carefully stack it onto the other, careful not to knock the whole thing over. A point was rewarded for each cup stacked.

And outside the library, kids at Kay's station had to carefully pull giant Jenga pieces from their slots. This was a lot harder than normal due to each piece having a piece of duct tape on it. Why? Because they had questions you had to answer before you got your point! Each brick successfully pulled from its place gave a point, but if you knocked it over you're down two points. Better stack it back up fast and quickly get those points back!

Lastly we had Cayleigh's challenge... an obstacle course! Students had to get through it as fast as they can by spinning five times right into hopping on one leg through traffic cones, complete three hula hoop spins, then throw a ball to the next person in line. It's a test of speed and precision! For each student that completed a lap, one point was rewarded. Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of this challenge, but just know it was awesome!

The final standings were:

1st - Spiderverse (Mykaela's group)

2nd - Agents of Shield (Chippy's group)

3rd - Guardians of Slayla (Shayla's group)

4th - Guardians of the Galaxy (Izaiah's group)

5th - Guardians of the Den (Brooklynn's group)

6th- Serpent Seven (Kay's group)

Day 2: Mall/Movies

What was supposed to be a day at Wave Tek up in Fairmont, turned into a mall and movie day due to the wretched rain. We still had a lot of fun! After a long morning to classes, students picked out a movie during lunch. They got to choose between How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo and Stitch, Mission: Impossible | The Final Reckoning, or Karate Kid: Legends. The most popular choice ended up being How to Train Your Dragon with 29 students putting it as their selected movie.

Before they actually got into the theater most students had about an hour to walk the mall. I'm a big reader so I stopped by Target's book section, and walked out with another book on my already lengthy "to be read" list.

Day 3: NewBees Speakers

On Wednesday, students were sat down in the auditorium for a returning guest here on Salem campus. Mike, Christian, and Paxton of NewBees alongside state Apiarist Shanda King and her husband talked all about honeybees during their time there. We learned facts about bees, like how they have five eyes, and why they're important. Afterward, students got to taste some of NewBees honey (which was delicious)! Overall it was a fun and educational assembly!

Day 4: Rained Out Again- Tigers Den it is!

Thursday, once more the weather was not on our side. Instead of doing the planned community service, students go to choose between going swimming at the on campus pool, spending the evening in the Tigers Den, or playing volleyball in the gym. Pepperoni rolls were the given snack that day!