Supplies needed:
• CD’s (old CD’s not being used or the AOL CD’s that you get in the mail)
•Hot glue gun and glue sticks
•Stickers and/or paint
•Clock mechanism (with or without the numbers included…only need the battery pack and the hands)
•Batteries
•Handouts informing about time management
Instructions:
Collect as many CD’s as you think you will need (for each clock made, roughly 4-5 CD’s are needed). Plug in the hot glue gun and wait for it to warm up, then have residents glue the CD’s together making sure that the face of the clock is the silver back of the CD (unless a CD that has a design on the front is preferred). Also, make sure the CD that will support the battery pack is also the silver side (just to make it look neat).
Once the CD’s are glued together (this may have to be done a few times so that the CD’s can be lined up together and they stick to each other), wait a minute for the glue to dry. Take the clock mechanism out of the package and follow the directions on the package, changing only one step: if a rubber piece was included to place between the battery and the face, take the rubber piece off and put it on the front of the CD instead, so that the washer can be screwed into place. This step is really important or else the washer won’t fit since the middle of the CD has a wide hole.
Glue the battery pack directly onto the CD and let it dry, then glue the rubber piece onto the front of the CD. From here, residents can decorate their clock with whatever supplies are offered to represent numbers (they may want to finish putting the hour and minute hand on so they can line up their numbers).
After decorating, finish putting the clock together. As residents are decorating their clocks or after they are finished, hand out information on time management and talk about how important time management is during the school year and throughout life. Ask how they manage their time and how they could improve upon this.
This program is really fun and allows residents to be creative while making something that is useful and thinking about an important issue.
My residents had so much fun and were open to talking about how they manage their time.
Submitted by Stephanie Morris, Resident Assistant, Lake Erie College