Thursday, August 30, 2012

It's Already Thursday!

This week went by fast,  but with each day there was growth. I wish I would have had the opportunity to watch the older group as much as the younger group.  I can only say that something happened today with the younger ones that made it feel like we had mastered an ultimate goal.


  • Monday, everyone was quiet and apprehensive.  
  • Tuesday, silliness reigned.  
  • Wednesday, excessive energy sent some of the students over the edge.  
  • But on Thursday, we reached calm!


We figured out that we didn't need to rev their engines up; we needed to slow them down!

 "Look at me.  Do this (touch your head), do this (touch your shoulders), do this (put your arms up in the air)" - a game that brought focus back to the group - was used over and over again throughout the first part of the morning with group one.  

Then we started the second part of the morning relaxing flat on the floor and rubbing our arms, shaking our fingers, squeezing our shoulders.  The engines calmed down and fun filled the space for everyone again.  Yesterday, by the end of the morning, three of the kids needed to retreat to the quiet room.  Today, everyone stayed and everyone played!

One activity was to come up with a problem that one hero tries to solve but can't and then a superhero comes in to save the day.  These were not long running skits, mind you, but the kids were able to quickly come up with an idea, compromise on the final product, and perform the skit to the rest of the group.  Now, I think there was some influence from certain video game characters but I'm too old to actually be current on all of that so, to me at least, it was amazingly imaginative.

Then we tried making up an info-mercial.  This one was a little harder because not everyone was sure what that was.  In fact, one of the students said "I don't know what that means but I do know what introvert and extrovert means. Can I ask everyone which one they are?"  We told him that he could do that during the break.  Then the question was posed again.  What is an info-mercial?  One young man matter-of factly just said "It's a commercial about a product that you don't really need!"  And that set the stage.

Tomorrow, the kids will put on a skit for the parents.  Yesterday, while trying to put it together, one student left the room because he couldn't deal with the choice of song being played on the piano.  Another had a melt down right in the room because he was worried about how to make a choice of whether he should or shouldn't be the bad guy!  Today, the same song was played on the piano and, this time, noise blocking headphones made it possible for student one to stay.  And the question of to be or not to be the bad guy never came up so student number two just calmly joined the skit as one of the passengers on the train.  Our skit is about a train for very good reason.  One student is continuously sharing departure times of trains to Chicago.  He will be the conductor in the skit tomorrow

The best quote of today though comes from him actually.  Everyone was laughing hard while playing a version of Duck, Duck, Goose, and he said "I laughed so hard I nearly leaked some oil!"

Oh my goodness, I am going to hate to see this week come to an end.

PS - There are 5 extroverts, 4 introverts, and 3 who think they are both!




1 comment:

pshepherd said...

I've finally taken the time to read all of your posts from this week. It sounds amazing, and I hope we get some time to talk about it more.