What a Wonderful Group
Program Highlights Thursday January 18, 2024
I wanted to start off by saying a few highlights that really convey what a wonderful and cohesive group of heroes we have!
First, Colin came into the program and was so bubbly and happy tonight and really up for participating in all the activities.
Then, there were several occasions in which Sean initiated comments in regards to how much he loved Colin's smile and that he has a great smile. One of the times he said this was caught on Colin's video when he was playing the minute to win it game of dropping a ping pong ball from eye height (This video is attached below). I love seeing how our heroes build each other up.
Finally, Nick was playing this same "minute to win it" game, Kevin came up because he wanted to get a video of his buddy playing the game. This is a wonderful example of some high level social skills- Kevin wasn't just interested in his own performance, but also in that of his friend and that he wanted to save this memory for future recall. At Hurley's Heroes we are focused on developing episodic memory, which is memory that involves recollections of previous experiences together with their context in terms of time, place and associated emotions. We want the memories of what happens at Hurley's Heroes to be more than just a black and white list of activities, but more about the emotions we feel when we are together: when we collaborate and support each other and how we consider everyone's perspectives and needs, not just our own. We are seeing examples of this type of growth every week.
After our usual conversation about what each hero did over the weekend, we played two new "minute to win it" games. Both games involved following directions, hand-eye coordination, and trial and error. These games also provide opportunities to learn from each other and to learn strategies such as letting someone else go first so you can learn by their example what works and what doesn't work to be better prepared for your turn.
We love to see the "joy of success"!
We then did a craft together that will take another week to complete, but we did phase one so far. We started to make bird feeders and every hero got to participate in making part of the recipe and then each hero was required to press the bird seed dough into their own mini bundt pans to dry, We used a novel recipe that worked pretty well vs the typical one you might see that uses peanut butter due to allergies. Don't worry if your hero missed tonight, we made extras so they can still take part in finishing this craft next week.
Next up was some relay races, that while competitive, were also fun and collaborative! We worked on balance with the egg on the spoon race, agility and gross motor with the scooter race, fine motor when we used a grabber tool to grasp a snowball and transport it to the finish line and when we passed a bean bag either over our heads or between our legs.
We finished up the session by guessing what some pictures were that our volunteer Chase drew for us. We worked specifically on waiting your turn by raising our hands and not calling out an answer. We want to make sure those heroes that might need a little more processing time all have a chance to think and answer as well.
The Hurley's Heroes Team
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