Yay for Buttons!!

Activity: Button Art

Target participant group: This activity is great for a wide range of individuals.


Therapeutic potential of this activity: Button art can benefit fine motor skills, help self expression and cognitive development.


What other groups may benefit from this activity? This activity may be beneficial for individuals with physical disabilities especially those that affect the hand, mental illnesses, attention deficit disorders, intellectual disabilities, and the elders.


What groups may not be as appropriate for this activity? This activity may not be appropriate for individuals were choking hazards may be a concern.


Activity description: Button art can be adapted to fit the needs of the individuals. This can be done in so many different ways for example, decorating a printed picture, attaching buttons to an object or creating a piece on canvas.


Resources needed: Depending on what kind of art work your making you may need different things. The essentials will be a flat surface with plenty of room. Of course buttons, containers to place buttons in for easy sorting, glue, wire, paper, canvases, objects, you name it just be creative!


Best leadership style for this activity: The best leadership style for this activity is democratic. It’s important to encouraging and allow individuals to be creative in their button art.


Where did you find this activity? We did button art as one of the activities with special recreation.


Where can others find more information on this activity?
The following link is to an artist website that uses buttons and other miscellaneous objects. It’s a great site to get inspiration for activity ideas.
http://inventorspot.com/articles/button_art_18353

Etsy in general is a wonderful website that can inspire any individual to start art and craft projects. The following link is to different kind’s button art on Etsy which can give rise to some great ideas for activities.
http://www.etsy.com/search?includes%5B%5D=tags&q=button+art

The Awesomeness of Adventure Challenge Courses

Activity: Adventure Challenge course

Target participant group: This activity is great because it can be adapted to fit the needs of your participants and the goals that your trying to achieve.

Therapeutic potential of this activity: This activity can help build trust, self-confidence, communication, cooperation and leadership. It can help individuals build up strength and endurance; increase their fine and gross motor skill.

Groups that may benefit from this: Adventure Challenge course can be of benefit to many individuals. This could be youth at risk, individuals overcoming addictions, intellectual and physical disabilities.

 

 

Groups it may not be appropriate for:  For the elderly population this activity may not be as appropriate.

Activity description: Adventure challenge course is a course that provides challenges for individuals to work through physical and mental situations. Challenge course allows for team building skills, problem solving skills, leadership skills and to learn about them self’s.

Resources needed: For this activity you’re going to need a facility that has a challenge course that is accessible to your participants. Make sure there are trained and certified instructors and safety gear at the facility.

Best leadership style for this activity: The best leadership style for this activity is a combination of laissez-faire and democratic. Depending on the needs of your participants you may want to use one style more than the other. It is important to make sure individuals are safe and to encourage them while at the same time allow them to develop the skill that adventure challenge courses are designed to do.

Where did you find this activity? http://www.nycgovparks.org/programs/rangers/adventure-course

Where can others find more information on this activity?

The following link is to an interesting article about universal challenge courses. It talks about making challenge course accessible to individuals with disabilities.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1145/is_3_35/ai_61793380/?tag=content;col1

The link below is to another adventure challenge course.

http://www.northernlightsvt.com/nlri/

The following link is to a study that was done on the effectiveness of a challenge course. The study was to see the impact it would have on leadership and work efficacy among college students. Even though not everything applies from this study the article does talk about some great things.

http://juptrr.asp.radford.edu/Volume_1/Challenge_Course_Effectiveness.pdf

Adventures 3 and 4

When our class met two weeks ago, we devoted the whole class period to planning and organizing the flash mob. We first started off by getting into our small groups and finalizing our idea for the flash mob before we pitched it to the class. Everyone was really excited but we all had our own idea of what the flash mob should be like. After we all pitched our ideas we voted on the location, what song/choreography we wanted. Voting on a location was easy but voting on the song/choreography was not so smooth. I know that many people were frustrated including myself. My thought process during this time was "if a professional dance company can not manage to learn a dance in 3hrs and they only have the rehearsal director telling them what to do, then there is no way that a class of where the majority of the students are not dancers are going to learn a complex dance routine, and add on their own variation with no leader." I was very concerned to say the least. Luckily Kaylee mentioned a dance called the interlude, we watched it on youtube and everyone seemed to agree that we should do that dance. For the rest of the night we spend making a list of the things that we needed to get done immediately, for next class period and for the day of the flash mob. We even had time to practice the dance and add some variations to it!


Last week I met with our professor to find an awesomely bright poster for our sign that we decided to make. During this time I came to find out that we had not found a private location to rehearse our flash mob. Because I am a person that likes to get things done and have things planned in advanced, I decided that I should help in the search. We ended up finding a great space to rehearse in but I was thrown off by how difficult the process was. The rehearsal it self was great! Some of us brought friends along that also wanted to participate in the flash mob. So the first thing on the agenda was to teach them the dance. They were quick learners so we ran through it only a couple of times. We talked through the logistics of the flash mob and we figured out the beginning and ending. Everyone had so much fun last week that I think no matter what happens this week the flash mob is going to be a blast!

Adventure 2

This week we learned the concepts of task analysis and activity analysis. we were given a really neat exercise to practice these concepts. Each group was given a activity, our group had kayaking, and we wrote down step by step how we were going to execute this activity for task analysis--for example, rent kayaking equipment, take equipment to the river, place kayaks in river, make sure to place kayaks so getting in is as easy as possible. For the activity analysis we had to list out all physical, cognitive, emotional and social skills that may be needed for the activity--upper body strenght to paddle for kayaking for example. We also had to think through administration details, financial details and make a equipment list. Next, we had to choose one of the population groups that was listed on the board. We choose spinal cord injuries. With our chosen population, we had to go back through the task analysis and the activity analysis and make any adaptations/modification to accommodate the needs of our population. I came to realize the importance of these concepts and how thorough you need to think through everything so that every ones needs can be met.


Towards end of class we were able to take some time and brainstorm some ideas for the flash mob. Me being as apprehensive as i am, am actually excited to share our brainstorming ideas with the class on Thursday. I'm also looking forward to seeing what  the other groups came up with. I think the flash mob will push many out of their comfort zones (including me) but at the same time let all us bond.