July 2025

Welcome to our July Sibshop. 

We were happy for the opportunity to gather with friends, INSIDE, where we could enjoy the AC and chilling out together.  

Our Trickle In activity was to create a self portrait button. 

After our welcome and introductions, we played an energetic game of Islands. Islands is a fun version of musical chairs sans the chairs. In their place are paper plate islands that disappear as the game moves along. You must dance to the music until them music stops and then you find an island to land on. Last one to find an unoccupied Island is out of the game.

Our first discussion activity was "Wheel of Feelings". Each Sibshopper gets a chance to land on the wheel and tell about a time they felt that emotion in relationship to their sibling with special needs. 

We enjoyed bagel bites, yogurt and peaches for lunch. It was a nice and chill break which we followed with a competitive game of Head, Shoulders, Knees & Cups. 

Our final activity was to create a people paper chain. We then ate a delicious ice cream sandwich as we talked about our sweet circles of support. We are blessed to have awesome support systems who help set us up for success.

We will see you in August!

 

June 2025

 Welcome to Summer and our June Sibshop! 

For our trickle in activity, we did a foil art transfer project. It was really fun to choose colors, place them and see the finished project!

After our welcome and introductions, we played a silly pool noodle game. The goal is to keep all the pool noodles standing while releasing it and running to grab the next players noodle before it hits the ground.

As you advance in the game, the circle gets large and larger, making it a lot more challenging to grab the noodle before it hits the ground.

For one of our discussion activities, we tried to walk a mile in our siblings shoes. In "Moccassins" we take the opportunity to step into our siblings shoes and answer some questions how we think they might might. 

Some of the topics we considered are how your sibling feels about school, how your sibling feels about having you as their brother/sister, and what some of their favorite things are. 

"Hold Your Nerve" is a new game to our Sibshoppers. You stand in a circle and someone throws the ball to another player. That player must catch the ball while those on the side of the ball catcher must immediately squat down. When the ball is thrown to another player they must catch it, those on the side of that catcher must squat down while the other players stand up. If you don't squat when you are supposed to, or you squat when you aren't supposed to, then you are out!

For a simple game, it is surprisingly challenging! We laughed a lot trying to get it right!

Lunch was great and then we had calories and energy to burn off so we played a hoop game that proved to be pretty physically challenging. You have three hoops, two in front of the one and you start hopping into them and bring the other hoop from behind so you can jump into it and make your way from the starting line to the finsh line. 

Our Sibshoppers did 2-3 rounds each trying to get a personal best.

Our final activity was the M&M game. You get to eat an M&M when you answer the question with the corresponding color. Chocolate is great way to incentivize our Sibshoppers to share their experience with their peers. At least it makes it a little sweeter...

Looking forward to getting together again in July!

May 2025

 Welcome to our May 2025 Sibshop.

For our trickle-in activity, we did some tape-resist painting on canvas. As usual, our Sibshoppers came up with unique and creative ideas for their artwork. Most pieces were made as gifts to present to their mothers for Mother's Day.

Here are some of the works in progress as the paint dries outside. 

The kids made some amazing pieces. We hope you enjoy them. 

Following our welcome and introductions, where we get to know another another review our expecations & consequences, we played a fun game of ball toss & useless machine.

We create a pattern of tossing a ball to everyone in the circle and then have to remember that pattern as more and more balls are introduced simultaneously. To make it a tad more challenging, we keep the pattern but everyone switches places. To make it a tad more ridiculous, we scoot our circle in so we are no longer tossing the balls across a spacious circle, but hanging them directly to one another. It may sound easy, but once we have a lot of balls going (and the giggles), the game can get out of hand and we end up with a useless machine. 

Reading books together as a group always gets us thinking and sharing about our own experiences as brothers and sisters with siblings who have special needs. We enjoyed this book today. 

Our Sibshoppers made all sorts of connections with the characters in the book and with one another as they shared their reactions and experiences with one another. 

For lunch we enjoyed some homemade lunchables. The kids really enjoyed stacking their 

bite sized morsels into towers!

Next up was "Egg Chomp". The goal of this silly minute to win it game is to chomp up and trap as many jellybeans and mini marshmallows as you can into one plastic egg. 

It definitely was not as easy as it looked, but our Sibshoppers developed better strategies over the few rounds that really made a difference. They were chomping up quite a few jellybeans by the final round. 

Our final activity of the Sibshop turned out to be quite the showdown. The game went on and on and on as two teams battled it our for a win. Hula Hoop Showdown is one our Sibshopers favorite games to play, It's a race to the finish to see which team can successfully hop through hoops to their finish line while winning multiple rounds of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" along the way. The rubber match to determine the winning team wins the record for longest game ever played at Sibshops!

See you in June!