Coming down the homestrech......

This past week in class we finished up our group long activities. The groups topics that were included Team Activities, Drama/Fine Arts, and Relaxation activities. The first group lead activities that emphasized the need for team work. The first activity was called "birdie on a perch" and was much like paired musical chairs. You would walk around until the music stopped and then raced to not be the last team to jump into your partner's arms. (Needless to say my team won!)  My favorite activity done by this group was a blind folded obstacle course in which one person in a pair was completely blind and the other was the sighted guild. This activity would be useful for teaching about visual impairments and how helpful a sighted guide can be and how important communication can be. It is important that the participants know the safety risks involved in moving around blindfolded.

My group was the next one to go with our Fine Arts activity. Our first activity was an creative informertial in which each group was given a random item and had to sell it as if they were from a different world and did not know what it was (much like the clip above from the little mermaid at the 3:30 point). Our next activity was wheel chair dancing which went very well. In this activity we paired up the students and had one person be in a wheelchair and the other be standing we then put the pairs into groups of three and gave them time to choreograph their dances. Needless to say there were some pretty creative dances. We did not have time to do my activity but hopefully I will be able to tell you about it next week. My favorite of these was the wheelchair dancing because it could be very useful to teach advocacy to all populations.

The final group did relaxation exercises. We started out by making stress balls out of balloons and sugar. Next we did some mental imagery, deep breathing and progressive relaxation exercises.  These exercises would be very useful for at-risk groups, chemical dependency groups, or anyone because everyone feels stressed every once in a while.

Long activities day 1

This week we began our long group activities. The three groups topics were arts and crafts, challenge activities, and music activities. My Favorite activity was done by the arts and crafts group and was called book altering. I am not usually the kind of person that is big on doing artsy activities but i really enjoyed this activity. This activity is very good for any population because it is what ever you make it.

To begin the activity we were told to pick out any book we wanted from a cart of old books. I originally grabbed a book of historical French poetry, but once was told what we were doing i decided to choose a book written in English so i could actually read the words. :) We were then told to rip out some of the pages to make room for our alterations. I really enjoyed just being able to rip apart some of the book because this is something that you usually can't do. (Note: while doing this part with younger or at-risk populations to make sure that the book is no completely torn apart and there is still some remaining book parts remaining to create with.)

The first station was black out poetry where you use a marker to black out certain words on the page to make new sentences into a poem (this is why i changes books, I'm not too good at french). Another station was bubble painting where you mix paint and water to thin it out then blow bubbles of paint onto your pages. You could also do regular painting, coloring, decorating with magazine clippings, and everybody's favorite paper mache. The last station was the one that I considered the most creative, window making. This activity created a picture frame within your book by cutting out a block of pages making a hole in the book. you could then decorate the first page of your frame and place a picture with in the frame or store a significant personal item in the hole.

I could see using this activity with pretty much any population over the age of 6. Since there are no guidelines for what your book needs to look like, you can use this with all cognitive and physical abilities. The major precaution to be aware of is the safe use of supplies and any sensitivities that a participants may have to paints, glues and other supplies.

I love that this activity allows it to be personalized and allow the participant to express themselves. By simply using different colors or magazines can allow you to tailor the activities to different ages or genders by using sports, teen, nature, etc. to fit everyone. This can also be a great activity to open up discussion about the participants feelings or what they are making represents. I would really find this activity useful to working with kids and teens going through medial treatments or pain therapy.

KUZ FRABA

Last week in class we reviewed the importance of relaxation for both the client and the CTRS. There are several different types and uses for relaxation therapy. One of the first therapy's is called laughter therapy. In this treatment participants are given situations where they laugh to relieve stress. Another laughter therapy is laughter yoga. This incorporates laughing as a substitute for breathing while doing yoga techniques. Although this may work for some people I was not a very big fan of it. I feel that this kind of treatment would be best for children or a group of adults who are comfortable around each other. This would be a difficult act to facilitate for adolescents.

Another important modality that we looked at was meditation. I learned that it is important to take into account a patients religious beliefs and inform them everything that is included in their meditation. If they are not comfortable tell them they may find comfort by discussing this with their religious leader.

The final, and my favorite, relaxation technique is mental imagery. This is made useful by way of deep breathing techniques but also allowing the client to use their own mental power to guide themselves. This type of therapy would seem to be useful for all age groups and be especially helpful as a part of re-motivation therapy. I especially liked the usage of calming videos or sounds.

Virtual School

Last week we had a guest speaker to talked about the benefits of online schooling for elementary school through high school. I had always seen virtual schooling to be somewhat infective way of schooling. one of the biggest issues that I had with it was that it is that i thought that the schooling would lose the social aspects of learning.

As I learned more about the school, I found alot of helpful aspects of this style of schooling. This can be very helpful for children with high needs including the need for constant medical attention or have some sort of learning disability that makes it difficult to learn in a traditional class room.

PUPPETS

Last week in class we watched an instructional video about how to work the puppet from the show "Kids on the Block". The video was interesting but seemed to kind of drag on.

We then had a discussion on different types of puppetry such as shadow puppets. I think that shows like this could be great for different populations. I learned that the usability of puppets really depends on the subject matter covered as well as the age group and situation of the audience.

Last week in TR my group gave our presentation on Adaptive hunting and fishing. We focused on types of adaptive equipment, different state laws, and groups that help lead hunts for people with disabilities. My part of the presentation focused on all the different kinds of adaptive equipment that has been invented to give people with physical disabilities a chance to hunt as independently as possible.

I would group the two major types of adaptations as location adaptations and shooting adaptations. Locational adaptions include the used of hunting blinds or even lifts like the one shown above
 that allow the hunter to get high into the tree alone. Some other adaptations include different types of tripods and mounts. My personal favorite was a computerized system that can be controlled by a joystick and fired with a puff system that causes a shot to be fired by blowing through a straw


We also watched a couple movies about people who have various disabilities but do not let that hold them back from doing extreme sports

Today we are gonna be talking about Powerpoint. Powerpoint, Powerpoint, Powerpoint....

For those of you that aren't office fanatics this video is what my title if referring to! :)

Last week in Innovative Activities we had group presentations on how to make many common activities more adaptive. The first group informed us about adaptive boating, including everything from Kayaking to sailing. The coolest adaptation I saw was the the Puff-Sip kayak that allows some one with quadriplegia to control the paddle with different breath combination on a specialized tube. We had the opportunity to hop in our kayak/canoe/table with a partner and practice our different strokes as we went "Just around the river bend!"

The second group discussed therapeutic horse riding. I learned that there are way more physical and mental benefits than I thought. I learned that it can be very helpful when working with amputees such as wounded warriors to help them relearn how to walk since the gait and pelvic movements of a horse are nearly identical to ours. I also gained more insight into the social interaction benefits of children with autism.

The third group discussed different adaptions for arts and crafts. I was aware of many of the items that were available but what really interested me was the number of great artists with disabilities. My favorite was the man who started doing pottery after he became completely blind and had never seen anything that he had made. Another was a young man who leaned the to paint by learning the differences in color of the paint by feeling their consistency.

The final group of the night talked about how you can adapt high ropes courses to accommodate people with disabilities. With how hard it seemed for me to be able to do high ropes, I was amazed with how easily and avoidably a course could be adapted with just a couple sets of pulleys.

Be ready for next week to hear all about my group presentation!!!!