Christmas Creativity🎄

December 2022

We’ve been swept away by the Christmas spirit and we want everyone to know it. During the holiday season each year we channel our most creative selves in order to incorporate the holiday festivities into our therapies – and it doesn’t hurt that so many of our clients love to create things. This is especially true of one of our DDD clients, Danielle; she absolutely loves to craft and in early December she gave our Speech Therapist Stephanie the idea for handmade Christmas ornaments during a group Speech session. Speech therapy entails many things, some of which might not be obvious at first thought: in a group setting, speech therapy can include turn-taking, active listening, peer support and also knowing how and when to speak up. These are all important skills to work on with our clients (and the rest of us, for that matter). Communication skills are paramount in any type of therapy setting, and the Speech department works hard to lead groups that engage and instruct. For this task Stephanie, Danielle and the group focused on two types of ornaments – salt-dough snowflake ornaments and popsicle tree ornaments.

After doing some crafting research Stephanie led the group of clients – Danielle, Sean, Willie, and Joanie – through multiple sessions to complete these ornaments. The first session was used to make the dough (salt, water + flour), and the subsequent sessions were used to paint and decorate the dough and popsicle ornaments which involved mod podge, paint, and glitter. Each client was assigned different responsibilities based on their abilities. The clients who were physically able were the ones responsible for crafting and decorating the ornaments, while the clients who were not were in charge of directing and verbally guiding their peers in what to do. It was a brilliant team effort that paid off with some of the cutest Christmas ornaments around. Yeah, we’re looking at you, Hallmark. When the ornaments were finished, Stephanie hung them up to be proudly displayed on the Speech Department’s Christmas tree for all to admire.