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.
SUMMER DIPS (for detailed recipes see Explorers, 7/16/2014)
Today, we made our summer dips "Hummus" and "Guacamole." We worked in small groups. One group created the guacamole, and the other the hummus. Each group had a team leader, who had to make sure that everyone was following the recipe and was taking turns fairly.
Ocean in a Bottle Relay
First, we had to form a single file, standing
shoulder to shoulder and each of us was holding a yogurt cup in our hands. The first
player filled his or her yogurt cup with dyed water and then poured the
water into the next player’s cup. We then passed the water down the line until
it reached the last player and that player poured the water into a bottle.
The player then moved to the front and the game continued until the
bottle was 2/3 filled with water or until the initial first player had made it
to the beginning of the line again. Then, we gathered as a group and we added oil, sea creatures, small rocks, glitter, etc. to the bottle and turned it
into an ocean in a bottle.The first part of the game, i.e., passing the water down the line with the help of yogurt cups requires everyone paying close attention to their partners, e.g., where is the cup with the water, is it my turn next?
Earth Obstacle Course:
We pretended that a big
therapy ball was our earth. The objective was to work with a partner and to transport the ‘earth’ through a course with obstacles (i.e., cones) by pushing the ball
together. The other members of our team practiced cheering us on by waving "Save the Planet" signs.
Mosaic Landscape
We also completed our landscapes, working in our same small groups from last week, by painting the dried Plaster of Paris relief. First, we discussed with our friends what we wanted to create
with the help of the paint (e.g., rivers, mountains, volcanoes).
“Save the Planet – Recycle”: We partnered up and worked as a team. We pretended to be a recycling truck and were holding
two pool noodles: 1 partner was in the front, 1 in the back, facing the
partner’s back. The objective was to pick up “garbage” (i.e., plastic bottles),
that needed to be recycled, with the help of the pool noodles and to place them
in garbage cans/bins. When the teams had collected all their garbage, other teams got a turn. We also came up with the idea of a cheering section: The players, who were waiting their turn, had self-made "Save the Planet" signs and came up with different cheers while holding up the signs to motivate the teams.
This game requires a lot of cooperation and will not work if the two partners don't work together. It also teaches how to compromise and negotiate (e.g., figuring out who will be in the front and who will be in the back) as well as being patient with each other. And of course, it's fun!!!
Friendship Passport, Part 1: We decorated a (fake) passport that we will turn into a friendship passport next week. We attached our portraits; added our names and date of birth or age. We also added stickers and our own drawings.
Today was our first spring session. Our theme this time around is "Earth." To warm up, we started with an adapted version of the popular bozo bucket game:
Continent Bozo
Buckets: Buckets representing the continents were spread out. The
player whose turn it was stood behind a line and tried to toss a bean
bag into one of the continent buckets. Each player could try 3 times to hit a
bucket. If the player hit the target, he/she could draw an animal card out of the
bucket. The flashcards were showing animals that live on that particular
continent.
This game addresses not only a variety of social skills such as turn taking and practicing good sportsmanship (e.g., cheering) but also provides great language opportunities such as learning the names of the different continents as well as the names of the animals that live on these continents. It also leads to natural opportunities for peer communication/interaction, e.g., the players can show the animal card they drew out of the bucket to their peers and structured questions can be asked to start a verbal exchange (e.g., "Do you like that animal?" "What is your favorite animal?").
Earth Collage: We all worked together and created a representation of our earth by attaching different collage materials (e.g., maps, pictures of buildings, stickers of animals, plants and people) to a big sheet of contact that was secured to the table with the sticky side up. We loved adding the glitter representing our oceans and deserts.
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.
