April 2015

Welcome to our April 2015 Sibshops!  Looks like it is going to be a "thumbs up" kinda day!

 This month's Sibshop theme is all about communication. We started by creating braille representations of our names with some colorful stickers. We also took a look, a feel really, at some braille books for children from the library. We all decided it would be a tough language to learn.

An increasingly silly game of "Telephone" had all of us giggling! It's super important to send a clear message and to be a good listener, otherwise we might end up with some ridiculous happenings.

Speaking of ridiculous happenings, this crazy game of "Catch The Chicken" made everyone scratch their heads trying to figure out what in the world was going on! Only one person in the group of three actually knows what they are acting out. The other two participants join in midway and simply join in with no real idea of what it is they are doing!  They and the audience have to guess what activity is happening. Below, you will see us "Catching the chicken!"

This crew of three is making smores!

 This group was making and baking a homemade pizza.

 This lucky group of three got to ride a roller coaster!

We were really lucky to have a great volunteer come out to teach our kids more about sign language. Lynnette is a mom of two, one child who has Down Syndrome, and is learning sign. Lynette led us through finger spelling and everyone got a chance to work on signing their name.

 We also learned some simple signs for body parts, clothing items and colors and played a fun game of "Do You Love Your Neighbor." This is a much loved game by our Sibshoppers and it was fun and challenging to add sign language to the mix.  You really have to pay attention!

 Our last communication themed activity was "Tellistrations." One person writes a simple sentence and passes the paper to their neighbor. Their neighbor then illustrates the sentence on the paper, then folds over the sentence so all that remains seen on their paper is their illustration. The paper is then passed to their neighbor who must write a sentence that describes the illustration on the paper. This pattern is continued for as many turns as you would like, or you run out of room on the paper, and the the paper is unfolded to reveal all the sentences and illustrations in total.

 Here we started with a cat eating a roller coaster and we ended up with a pig and a lizard smushed together!

This "tellistration" started with a baby eating sheep and ended with Sean chasing a bull. (Although in between it was a man scaring a ghost sheep!)

We really enjoyed communicating with our Sibshoppers this month! See you next time.