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.
“Paper Marbling”: Everyone absolutely loved this project today. Paper marbling is a great activity to learn about colors, patterns the water surface and inks. We worked in small groups and used a Japanese Suminagashi kit (see photo). Here is how it works:
1. Fill a deep tray (bigger than letter size) approximately 2/3 with water.
2. Place the "float paper" that comes with the kit onto the water surface and let it soak.
3. Decide what colors you want to use and place a small drop of ink directly onto the "float paper." We took turns and used multiple colors. It is important to be gentle (great learning experience): If the ink bottle is squeezed too hard and too much ink comes out of the bottle, the ink will not stay on the water surface but will just sink to the bottom of the tray.
4. To create designs we gently stirred the ink on the surface with a brush. We also tried blowing.
5. Then, we placed a piece of paper onto the water surface. The paper picked up the pattern and voila, we our beautiful paper was created.
Some tips:
- The water has to be changed once in a while. When the colors start to look pale on the paper, it's time to change the water.
- The inks go a long way and are absolutely non-toxic but don't wash out of clothes easily.
- If the ink gets on fingers, baby wipes work well to get hands clean again,
“Leaking” Relay Race: We were divided into two teams. We placed two bins with water as well as two yogurt
cups with a hole at the start line and two bins with a bottle at the finish
line. We lined up at the start line. The first player on each
team filled the leaky cup with water from the bin. The player then had to run as
fast as possible to the finish line to fill the bottle. Then, the player ran
back to the start line and handed the cup off to the next player. The game
continued until the bottle at the finish line was filled with water. Before we began the race, we brainstormed what we cold do to compensate for the hole in the cup (e.g.,
run fast). We figured out quickly that it is hard to carry water when there is a hole in the
cup.
Art Project “Balloon Painting”: Today, we experimented with colors and balloons. We decorated a paper by dipping balloons that were blown up slightly or filled with
sensory materials into paint and then made an imprint on the paper. We tried different ways how to mix colors (e.g., first using a balloon that was dipped in
yellow and then adding a second layer with a balloon that was dipped in red.).
Water Balloon Relay: Since we love this game so much and the weather was great, we played it again today. We partnered
up and went around obstacles holding a container with a water balloon in our hands. At the end of the obstacle course, we tried to hit a target by throwing our water balloons toward the target. We worked on requesting balloons in a certain color and handing the balloon container to a friend to indicate whose turn it was.
Sensory/Art Project "Under the Sea": Today, we created our own ocean in a Ziploc bag:
1) We squirted blue hair gel into a Ziploc bag. Since this was tricky, we had to make sure to help each other, i.e., one of us was holding the Ziploc bag open while our partner squirted the gel in.
2) We added glitter, plastic sea creatures and foam fish to the hair gel. Everyone was mindful of sharing the materials fairly.
3) Next, we had to make sure to get the air out of the Ziploc bag and then we closed it and taped the top with clear packaging tape.
4) We had a lot of fun moving the gel and sea creatures around in our bag.
5) We added some stickers such as dolphins, turtles, sharks to the outside of our bags.
6) We put our final product in another Ziploc bag, sealed the bag with tape and attached it to a poster board.
It was amazing how different our oceans looked.
Water Balloon Beach Towel Toss: Practice makes perfect. Today, we played this popular game again. We used beach towels to launch water balloons into targets (hula hoops). Two or more of us were holding the corners of a beach towel and lifted it up in the air on the count of three. We really had to work together as a team to make it work.
Art Project “Ocean Collage”: The students worked together and painted a big poster board with glossy/sticky paint and glitter paint We used colors that represented the ocean (i.e., shades of blue and green). We then attached sea creatures and
stickers to the board. Here is an very easy way how to make glossy and glitter paint:Glossy paint: Mix corn
syrup with paint or food coloring.
Glitter paint: Mix paint with glitter.
Water Play: We filled bottles and different containers with the help of funnels and hoses and looked for shells and sea creatures with fish nets. We worked on sharing a space and toys with our friends.
 |
| Squeezing the oranges |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Small group project “Orange Banana Smoothie”: Today, we had a lot of fun preparing our summer smoothies. While we were cooking, we made a list of our favorite smoothie ingredients. Chocolate was among the favorites. We learned that cooking requires a lot of teamwork.
Here is our smoothie recipe (6 servings):
3 cups freshly squeezed orange juice (8 oranges)
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
2 cups strawberries, tops removed, and cut in 1/2
3 ripe bananas, cut
Combine the orange juice, lime juice, strawberries, and bananas in a blender and process until smooth.
Later at snack, we drank our smoothies. Some of us really liked the taste, others not so much. But we all tried them.
 |
| Ready to blend |
 |
| Cutting strawberries |
