Glendale Campus Hosts 22nd Annual Kids Day
“Inspires to Aspire” theme helps kids focus on their future.
- AZ - Glendale
Families of staff and faculty from the Glendale Campus gathered together to attend the 22nd annual Kids Day.
In October, the Glendale Campus hosted 122 kids who got to explore the campus and discover their interests.
Hosted by the Glendale Campus Office of Human Resources, Kids Day has been an annual event for the last 22 years. This event offers children of ɫƵ staff and faculty the opportunity to come on campus for a day of fun, learning, and adventure. This year’s Kids Day’s theme was “ɫƵ Inspires to Aspire,” and the goal was to inspire kids to think about what motivates them, what they want in their future, and how to get there.
The day began with breakfast, music, family photos, and worksheets to spark conversations about planning for the future. Once all of the kids received their MWU t-shirts and took a large group photo, everyone split into smaller groups to explore three different inspiration zones, which included:
- A mock graduation ceremony
- An introduction to Library services and activities
- An introduction to Occupational Therapy
For the mock graduation ceremony, the Registrar and Student Financial Services Offices prepared a workshop that gave each child the chance to put on a graduation cap and tassel, announce from a stage what they wanted to be when they grew up, and walk across the stage to receive their diploma for participating in Kids Day. Some of the future careers chosen by the children were:
- Physical therapists
- Real estate agents
- Cosmetologists
- Veterinarians
- Ninjas
- Astronauts
- Imagineers
- Scientists
- Paleontologists
- Professional sports players (basketball, golf, football, boxing)
- Marine biologists
- Firefighters
- Police officers
Once every child received their diploma, they got to view actual graduation caps and gowns from the different ɫƵ colleges.
The Introduction to Library services included three exhibits for the children to explore:
- Interactive Anatomy: children got to touch and interact with skeletons, bones, and models of the body
- Bone Dig: children dug through sand to find bones and then had them examined by a paleontologist
- Trivia: children answered trivia questions for prizes
The library also had a display featuring the books required during the first quarter of school for Dental, Osteopathic Medicine, and Veterinary students. This helped show the kids how much studying is needed during medical school and also illustrated the importance of having a fully stocked library in which to study.
The third inspiration zone was an Introduction to Occupational Therapy (OT), during which the kids learned about the OT profession, how it can help improve quality of life, and how play can be an important part of OT.
Finally, Kids Day wrapped up with raffle prizes and a magic show from professional magician, Matt Lemm.
