October 2022

 It's Fall, Y'all!

We created some paper pumpkins. Super easy and super fun as well as a super cute finished project.

Each session following our trickle in activity, we gather for welcome and expectations. It is a great way for us to keep getting to know one another and talk about our siblings and their special needs. The kids make important connections as they share their brief stories  and empathize with one another.  After we wrapped up our discussion of expectations and consequences we had ourselves an indoor snowball fight. The goal is to get as many snowballs on your neighbors yard as possible. A little friendly physical competition definitely gets the blood pumping!

Next up was "Wheel of Feelings". We toss the beanbags onto our wheel and and see where they land. Whatever emotion they land on is an opporutnity to share your feelings about experiences you have had with your sibling. You might share a time when you felt pride, happiness, anger or sadness. 

Yummy Halloween Treats greeted us at lunchtime. Mummy dogs, jack-o-lantern clementines, and cheese ghosts were on the spooky menu and devoured quickly.

Engineering spaghetti & marshmallow towers isn't quite as easy as it sounds. They are definitely unique building materials. Our Sibshoppers did a fanstastic job manipulating their materials to build some pretty amazing towers. We might have some future engineers and architects in this talented group of kids. 

We followed this engineering activity with something a bit more colorful and creative--as well as delicious. The Halloween cookies turned out to be both wonderfully artistic and yummy!

See you for more fun, friendship (and likely feasting!) in November.

SEPTEMBER 2022

 Due to unforeseen circumstances, Sibshops was cancelled this month.

See you all in October.

August 2022

 Welcome to our "Back to School" themed Sibshop.

The start of school is right around the corner so we spent a little time prepping and getting back into a school frame of mind. We started with a little READING and created some fun monster bookmarks to use once we are back in the classroom.

Following welcome and introductions we went outside for RECESS and played an active game of "Tic Tac Toe Relay." It's a much more physical game of the traditional childrens game.

We had some amazing puzzle builders during our GEOGRAPHY class. 

You could even call them dissectologists--they were that good!

LUNCH was definitely in order and a baked potato bar was on the menu. 

We couldn't find rectanglar shaped pizza...

WRITING via video prompt was next on the schedule. Our student Sibshoppers enjoyed watching this video of two brothers named Griffen and Turner. Following the video--which we watched two times at the kids request--we answered some prompts graffiti style. Then our Sibshoppers got to share their answers.

To wrap up our day we finished with our Sibshops version of PE CLASS. Our feet got moving and our hearts got pumping as we chased one another around in a game of Clothespin Tag.

Thanks for playing school with us!

July 2022

Welcome to our July Sibshop. 

As all our friends gathered, we created some Funny Faces together. You get to trace all sorts of silly parts and mix and match till you get your own unique character.

After our introductions and review of expectations and consequences, we headed outside to test our agility with a game of "Pool Noodle Catch." 

The instructions are simple: stand in a circle with your team, everyone gets a pool noodle, count down from 3 and gently let go of your own pool noodle and run to catch your neighbor's before it falls down. You circle gets larger and larger with each successful round.

This is one of those sneaky games that our Sibshoppers thought would be easy, but turns out to be way more challenging than they expect!

Our first discussion activity of the workshop was called "Sound Off."

Our Sibshoppers completed a worksheet that goes like this:

• If I could tell…. (my parents, my friends, my teacher, the whole world)
• Just ONE THING that is …. (good, so-so…)
• About having a sib with special needs it would be….

It's a great opportunity for our Sibshoppers to share their unique experience with their sibling. 

Our Sibshoppers always seem to enjoy a quick game of "4 Corners" where you must quickly, yet quietly, find a corner to inhabit and hope you aren't singled out and can stay in the game. They worked up an appetite--which is a great thing since it was time for lunch. 

After lunch, our Sibshoppers had some new energy to burn so we snuck in a few rounds of the classic "Knots."

"Balloon Foot Volleyball" was up next. This version of Volleyball is played with a balloon and your feet (seems obvious enough) BUT you must also NOT use your hands and MUST be in a crab walk position. The balloon is unpredicatable and on top of that there can be a couple "balls" in play at the same time.

To wrap things up, we enjoyed "The M&M Game." In our small groups we answer differently colored questions and as we do, we get to munch on some tasty chocolate candy. 

We are always grateful for the fun and friendship of each Sibshop workshop.

See you in August for our Back To School themed workshop.