Adaptive Games

     The inspiration for this blog post came from my volunteer work as a clinic aid in the AAC clinic at San Francisco State University. In my previous post I talked about what AAC was and the two communication systems, aided and unaided. To refresh your memory, aided communication uses technology and unaided communication includes the use of gestures or sign language. At San Francisco State we had a camp, AAC Storytellers Club, which was geared toward improving language skills. The theme of the camp was the Summer Olympics. The main reason I am bring this up is because we had to create adaptable games and activities for the children to participate in. All of the campers used aided communication systems and were physically disabled.

      Each day we focused on an Olympic sport. Depending on the sport of the day, we introduced all the vocabulary and created activities related to that specific sport.

 Here are some examples of the sports and activities we coordinated:

 Track and Field: We took a field trip and set up the games at the track.

Activity #1: Cones

There were five cones set up. Each child was given two opportunities to race through the cones and their best time was recorded.

 Activity #2: Frisbee Toss

Again the children got two opportunities to through the Frisbee and their farthest distance was recorded.

 Activity #3: Relay Race

The children were all spread out along the track and took turns passing the baton to their friends.

 Basketball: We took a field trip to the basketball court and played three games.

 Activity # 1: Questions about Basketball

The leader asked a question and the children answered the questions with the help of the clinicians and their aided devices.

 Activity # 2: Hoops

Hula hoops were set up on the floor. The children took turns rolling the ball and attempted to hit as many hula hoops as possible. Each child got two chances and their “personal best” was recorded.

 Activity # 3: Dribbling

We had big orange balloons with strings attached. The strings were placed on the children’s wrists. As they moved their hand the balloon ball would move up and down. Each child “dribbled” from one cone to another.

 Gymnastics:

Activity # 1: Bean Bag
The children danced around to the bean bag song. They had to follow the directions of the song and place the bean bag on different parts of their body.

Activity # 2: Limbo

We decorated a limbo stick with streamers. Each child got an opportunity to limbo underneath the stick as it got lower and lower.

 Activity # 3: Ribbon Dance

We attached ribbon to a rubber band and placed it around each child’s wrist. They twirled their ribbon and danced while music was being played.

     Due to the children’s disabilities and language delays, the clinicians gave a lot of prompting and support to create a fun learning environment that encouraged the use of language.