This outing focused on budgeting as well as overall financial education. We started off the outing with the students make a “Needs and Wants” list, prioritizing the items they spent money on as being essential or optional. Next, the students calculated their weekly budget by adding up the costs of the items on the list - it was nice to have the students be aware of how much they spent and see where they could potentially save money. In order to practice, students "planned a vacation" and were given a certain amount of money to spend on different activities for a trip. Since this was our last outing for the year, we tried to have fun with everyone one last time by playing Pictionary. The students are amazing artists! This outing included many real-life applications and was a great way to finish off the year.  

This week was focused on soft skills, as well as a continuation of the resume building from last week. We sat down with the students and helped them realize their past work experiences as well as the skill sets they currently possess. It was a bit difficult but starting conversations with the students really got them to open up and talk more about their careers. We then discussed what jobs they were interested in applying to in the future. Our soft skills portion consisted of teamwork activities, including a water balloon relay race and building a tower made from spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. The students thoroughly enjoyed getting their hands dirty from the tower building exercise - it was a great start to the outing! Other outings this week also had an egg drop as a team-building activity. This upcoming weekend will be our annual StRIVE Field Day, which will take place at the San Diego Zoo so if you don't see us around, we'll probably be playing with the pandas.