April 2018

Welcome to our April Sibshop!

For our trickle in today, the kids got their creative juices flowing with some fingerprint art.

They ended up producing some pretty clever artwork!  They always surprise me with their creativity.

Last weeks Spring snowstorm inspired me in creating this month's agenda.  We ended up having our own indoor snowball fight!  We stayed indoors and created snowballs out of paper, so it was a touch warmer, we didn't have to bundle up and no one ended up with cold fingers.

An indoor snowball fight does wear a Sibshopper out! Their young able bodies tired of the constant squatting and throwing and rushing to get rid of snowballs on their territory. So we revised the rules to where you had to stay on your hands and knees with your eyes closed. While it wasn't as exhausting, it was a little tricky and a little scary as there were bodies crawling all around you!

Our BYU volunteers led our group in a Bibliotherapy session, reading and then discussing the book "Pablo Pineda". Pablo has Down Syndrome and has achieved any number of excellent successes throughout his life.

"Undercover Leader" is a classic Sibshops game that has one player acting as Detective and another as the Leader of the rest of the group. The Leader secretly directs the group to move their bodies in all sorts of ways while the Detective must deduce who the Leader is.

After a tasty lunch, we played a crazy game of Mousetrap.  We all had calories to burn after our lunch of smothered chili dogs!

Our final discussion activity is called "Feelings On A Rope." Our Sibshoppers are presented with different "scenarios" and they must indicate via their position on a rope whether they really like or dislike the presented scenario.  Some scenarios are simply indicating one's preference for pepperoni pizza or going to Seven Peaks. 

Other more serious scenarios may include their feelings on having a sibling with special needs, attending the same school as their sibling, being asked to babysit their sibling, or going out in public as a family with their sib.

We topped off the event with some tasty ice cream sundaes. 

See you in May!

March 2018

Welcome to our our Lucky March Sibshop!  I'd like to introduce you to Helpful McNoodles. She's got a great smile! As our Sibshoppers entered, they were encouraged to discover their Leprechaun name using our special name generator.  We had a Jolly McWobbles, Cheerful McCheesy, Lucky McBlarney and all sorts of clever and silly names.

Our Sibshoppers created a Rainbow Chain with their very own pot of gold for our trickle in activity.

Our awesome volunteer Robin kept the Sibshoppers happy with a fun game of "Down by the Banks".

"Bean Bag Toss" gets our brains and bodies moving! You create a pattern by which you toss the beanbags in your group. You must call out the name of the person to whom you are throwing the beanbag. The kids get the hang of that pretty quickly, but it gets a little more challenging when another 2 or 3 beanbags are put in circulation!

The game then changes a bit and we call it "Useless Machine". They bring their large circle in and stand much closer, this time just handing the beanbags to one another.  Seems easy but there are lots of moving parts and lots of dropped beanbags.  Hence the Uselessness aspect in the name!

We threw a balloon in there just for fun as well!

We didn't think the Sibshoppers would enjoy Cornbeef and hash so much, so we just went with a Lucky Green Theme.  Green juice, green grapes, & green pancakes for the win!

As legend has it, if you can just locate the end of the rainbow you will be rewarded with a pot of gold!  Now that would be awesome.  Our Sibshopers were asked what they would buy for themselves if they had an enormous pot of gold at their disposal. They were then asked what they would buy for their sibling with special needs with that lucky gold.  Our final question for our sibs is what would they wish for their siblings with special needs. We encouraged them to think of things you cannot buy.

Sometimes our Sibshoppers just give me the feels. Their responses to this question hit me right in the heart! 

Next up was "Scrabble Scramble".  Two teams with limited access to letters of the alphabet are given a general topic.  They then race to put together an answer using their alphabet letters.  You get points for being first, for having correct spelling and for having the longest word. Everyone must participate!  These two teams battled and battled to come out on top.

We discovered that the Irish Music station on Pandora is pretty fun.  Some of our Sibshoppers were encouraged to get up and do some Irish Dancing.  They were actually pretty impressive. But for this game of "Irish Hot Potato" we just sat on our tushies and used our arms and hands to pass this hot potato around! When the music stopped and you were holding the tater, you were asked to tell us something that makes you feel lucky about having your sibling with special needs.

A little sweet treat as we played "Don't Eat Pete!" rounded out the activities for the day. The kids really enjoy this simple game. We love their smiling faces.

See you in April!