Social Thinking Levels 1 and 2
Developed by Michelle Garcia Winner, SLP, MA CCC

Based on concepts from Michelle Garcia Winner children learn a variety of social skills including: perspective taking, verbal and non-verbal communication, making and keeping friends, understanding bullying, approaching others (pre-dating skills if appropriate), people in authority, managing stress, thoughts vs. words, creating memory files for future conversations, the importance of personal hygiene, peer pressure, identifying emotional states, and conversation skills. Please note that some of these topics may not be exact as topics are endless depending on the need of the participants.    Social Thinking is ongoing and changes with age, therefore participants are encouraged to participate in more than one Social Thinking group as their needs change.
 

Social Thinking: Superflex  Level 1 and 2

Developed by Stephanie Madrigal, SLP, MA CCC and Michelle Garcia Winner, SLP, MA CCC

Superflex is a Social Thinking curriculum designed for students to explore social thinking in a fun, different, motivating and non-threatening environment. The curriculum is based on a Superhero called Superflex who is totally flexible and helps us make good social thinking decisions. Superflex is challenged by the Team of Unthinkables, a group of villains who try to defeat Superflex in different ways. The curriculum focuses on children identifying their own Team of Unthinkables and strategies to defeat them.

Pre-Purposeful Play Group

The purpose of this group is to teach children how to play side by side with peers.  Concepts that will be introduced include: waiting, basic turn taking and parallel play.

Purposeful Play Group Levels 1 and 2

The Purposeful Play Group is designed to work on key concepts of development to give the student with social thinking challenges a head start in learning skills for relating to their family and peers. The Purposeful Play Group teaches children to play in novel ways and facilitates play and language development while emphasizing relationship development and connection with adults and peers. Focus will be on: Joint attention and imitation, awareness of others, making predictions, reading other people’s plans, sharing an imagination, cooperation and negotiation.

Life Skills Group

The Life Skills group is designed for teenagers and young adults to learn the skills necessary to become more independent. The group is ongoing and teaches skills such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, gardening, shopping, job readiness and organization.

Kindergarten/School Readiness

The Kindergarten readiness group is designed to prepare children for the transition to kindergarten. The group will cover academic, social, and routine aspects of kindergarten. Academic activities may include: drawing, colouring, printing and cutting. Social activities may include sociodramatic play, sharing, and turn taking. Routine activities may include: circle time, snack time, lining up and group bathroom trips.

Anxiety Management Program
Kid’s Guide to Taming Worry Dragons

Developed by Dr. Sandra L. Clark, PhD and Dr. Jane Garland, MD, FRCP (c) and the Department of Psychology and Outpatient Psychiatry Department, Mood Disorders Clinic, BC Children’s Hospital.

Worry Dragons covers: What worry does to the body, sleep tools, laughter, exercise, procrastination, learning to relax, learning about feelings, friendship, joining a group, facing worry, learning to accept praise and remembering success.

Teen Group

The Teen group is broken up into four units: Worry Taming for Teens, Social Thinking, Sexual Health and Job Readiness. This group is a combination of some of the previous groups described but specifically tailored toward teenagers.

Yoga for Children and Youth with Special Needs
The Radiant Child Program

Yoga helps promote self-discipline, exercises the body, helps with physical coordination, and helps with right/left brain coordination. Yoga helps children be aware of themselves from the inside, both physically and emotionally to increase self-confidence, to encourage awareness of the body and to have fun.

Fine Motor Group

The fine motor group uses crafts and other fun activities to work on fine motor skills in a group setting. Tasks are tailored toward the needs of each child based on age and ability. Fine motor skills involve the small muscles of the body that enable such functions as writing, grasping small objects, and fastening clothing. Fine motor skills involve strength, fine motor control, and dexterity.

 Gross Motor Group

Gross motor skills are larger movements involving the arm, leg, or feet muscles or the entire body — things like crawling, running, and jumping are gross motor skills.  The gross motor group uses fun activities to work on gross motor skills in a group setting. Some activities include: obstacle courses, ball skills, relays, and athletic games such as soccer and hockey.

Articulation Group

Teaching children the correct production of speech sounds in a group setting. The group environment provides the opportunity for peer modeling as well as opportunities to work on peer interaction and social language.

Feeding Therapy Group

This group is run by a Speech-Language Pathologist and Speech Language Assistant and provides children with feeding difficulties to gently and effectively increase the variety of foods they will eat.

Alert Program (R) – How Does Your Engine Run?

Developed by Sherry Shellenberger and Mary Sue Williams, Occupational Therapists and co-owners of Therapy Works Inc.

The Alert Program (R) is used by children, therapists, parents and teachers to help regulate and maintain levels of alertness. The program has been adapted and is used by preschool children up to adulthood. Children will learn how to regulate to an optimal level of alertness needed to complete a variety of tasks, i.e. sitting in circle time, completing table top activities.

Sexual Health and Safety

This is a pre-teen and /or teen group with participants grouped by age and gender.  Key concepts include:  Relationships, Love and Friendship, Positive Communication strategies, Anatomy and Sexual Response Cycle, Dating and Sexual Relationships, Homosexuality, STD Awareness, Contraception and Safe Sex Practice.

Employment Readiness

This group is for adolescents who are preparing for their first job.  Participants will learn to prepare a resume, fill our and employment application, job search skills, interviewing techniques and role-plays, appropriate hygiene, dress and behavior for the workplace.