The Clubhouse is the Behavioral Intervention Association's (http://www.bia4autism.org) after-school program. Once a week, children between the ages of 5 and 12, who have communication and social challenges, meet and engage in fun activities to practice different social skills. The Explorers focus on skills such as staying with the group, greetings, turn taking, participating independently in activities, and brief exchanges with peers. The Adventurers focus on skills such as initiating and maintaining conversations, perspective taking, and negotiating with peers.
Today, we introduced our new friendship 'bucket' system.
The idea was adapted
from the book, “Have you filled your bucket today?” by Carol McCloud. Everyone in the group
has a friendship bucket and earns marbles for acts of kindness and friendship
throughout each Clubhouse day. The first step was to come up with examples how our buckets
can be filled and to create a poster. Here are the things the Clubhouse students came up with:
We also discussed what could spill (figuratively) our buckets, e.g., using unkind words or sending unfriendly body messages.
But we all agreed that 'WE ARE FILLERS NOT SPILLERS!' At the end of each
Clubhouse meeting, we will count how many marbles we have collected as a group.
