Today, we chose between two games for the purpose of collaborating and listening to our friend’s opinion. We learned that our friends do a great job listening to each other’s opinions and are great sports when their opinions don’t get picked. We also learned that our friends love dancing. The guys seemed to really enjoy getting back together.

 

We began today’s friends club with What’s UP? The group members shared what they did over the long break. Many of the Friends Shared video gaming stories and they asked great question about each other’s stories. We used a talking to stick to help everyone stick to their turn.

The group discussed taking turns, paying attention to the group, personal space and the negative aspects of cheating. We also talked about when jokes get old.

 

We collaborated to make create a unique obstacle course, and then picked games together. The little guys learned the value of sportsmanship while playing UNO Attack. It was a really good session and all of the WG’s seemed to genuinely have a good time playing together.

 

These boys were very excited to see each other and it was exciting to see that bonding between friends have already begun to take place. They had so much to talk about that the hour did not seem like it was enough time. We had the group choose together what games to play and took intermittent dancing breaks to deal with our excitement. They worked together, politely taking turns during operation, and had a hard time focusing during apples to apples.

 

We had a few absences tonight so it was a small cozy group. We practiced giving compliments and receiving compliments. There were some new updated fashion changes amongst the group. The group gave an update on each other’s lives since they last met. Bullhonkey was super fun and the leader lost the game to the Friends Club members by a lot. Because it was a small group, it was nice to see that some of the students’ personality traits come out.

 

Our little friends seemed happy to be back in friends club. We did a round of what’s up and asked each other questions about Christmas break and talked about the different toys the kids received. The group participated in the game freeze dance and then a book about friendship was read. The focus of this group was developing conversations and learning how to introduce a conversation rather than blurt stories out.

 

The boys were excited to be back and excited to welcome the new kids in the group. The conversational activity of What’s Up was played in order to catch up on each other’s lives and to practice turn taking in conversation. The visual cue for this game was a ball that had to be passed around in order to practice taking turns and identifying whose turn it was. The kids broke into small groups according to similar interests and played Legos, apples to apples, and came together for one last game as a whole group. A few of the Friends took game breaks when they needed them, and others needed reminders that they are allowed to take a game break if they got frustrated. This will be a focus for this group during the weeks to come.

 

It was so great to have this group back together!  It was up to the boys to make the choice in activity and they had to be effective communicators in expressing their ideas of what they wanted to do and be flexible when their ideas were not as accepted as they wished them to be. The boys seemed to have a great time and played a lot of fun games. Some of the best sportsmanship from these boys came out today and it was exciting for the staff to see that.