Extracurricular Activities!

Mondays are usually known for being bland and mundane, but today was the exact opposite at my project! Having the clients gone over the weekend definitely calmed the facility down, but now they are back for the week and full of energy! Today was my first real day being in the EP (Experiential Program) rooms with the clients and interacting with them on a one on one level. The way that I help out is that I travel to different EP rooms throughout the day (today I started with EP 1 and in the afternoon worked with the Senior EP group) and help them with basic skills such as coordination, stretching, basic learning functions and anything else the full time staff needs help with! These interactions can get tricky at times as some of the patients do not like change in their daily routine, which is what I am supposed to do. In order to get around these obstacles I was taught to try different approaches in order to gain the same end result. Prizes and other types of reward services are not encouraged at the center so in order to do this we encourage walks. For example, if a client does not want to participate in any given activity, we are constantly encouraged to walk with them around the building outside to give off some of that negative energy and also use it as a form of exercise to get them stimulated. For the rest of the week I am going to be working mainly with the senior EP room and leading group exercises!