July holiday sessions

We have just concluded our holiday sessions, which included Thursday afternoons with the normal group, and two Wednesday afternoons with two new groups of kids.

One surprise was how similar the groups were, despite being filled with such unique individuals.

Playing wii

Firstly the normal sessions - we are now up to eleven, and things are going well. A few kids are not able to attend all the time do to other issues, which is perhaps to be expected. Considering that some kids are happy just using laptops, we perhaps have room to cater for 9 kids so we are always full and using our time and space well.

We took a relaxed approach to things during the holidays and didn't push anything. We pulled out the Wii and old megadrive so the kids could play games together.

For these kids there is value in playing competitive social games - it teaches them to socialise, and to accept losing.

We had a minecraft competition and thanks to some generous contributions from Logitech were able to award all of the kids with a set of headphones as a prize. We hope that this will also help with the noise issue, it's very very loud during these sessions. I often wondered what was going to happen with a group of kids who are all happy to talk 'at' each other, and now we know, it gets louder and louder, until everybody is shouting to be heard. That said, it's not an annoying noise, it's more like a fun party with computer music in the background.

Wow hoodie

The extra sessions also went well. All up we had around 15 new young people in and I think all with the possible exception of one(who was not Asperger's) enjoyed themselves. Quite a few asked if they could come back.

In the first session all of the participants played minecraft, nearly all of the time. Many had already played, those who hadn't picked it up straight away.

In the second session they all played minecraft at some stage, but they also played some wii, world of warcraft, and terraria amongst other games.

The parents seemed happy but Trish and Stefan would know more about how that went.

Parent's room