Daniel Ruiz

LEI 4724
4/10/17
Activity: I love everybody except....
Source:
Seltzer, R. (2003, May 09). Social Activities for Small Groups. Retrieved April 10, 2017 , from
Therapeutic Recreation Directory: http://www.recreationtherapy.com/tx/txsmsoc.htm
Equipment Needed: Chairs

Activity Description:
1. Have a group of participants of 10 or more, sit in a circle with one less chair and a
volunteer in the middle.
2. The volunteer begins by saying I love everybody except those with brown
hair...or those with black shoes.
3. If you have brown hair you get up and switch seats including the volunteer.
4. Participants can't go to the chair next to them. It must be away from your initial
seat.
5. The goal of this activity is to have participants run around trying not to get stuck
in the middle.
Leadership Considerations:
1. While working with individuals with Downs Syndrome mostly have developed
good social and behavioral skills, there is a minority that may develop difficult
behaviors particularly with individuals with delays in speech and language
development. As the facilitator it is important to keep a close eye on participants
to make this activity more pleasurable, so by adapting the activity with the
starting phrase of I love everybody except those with written up on the board,
so that it is easier for them to develop their sentence and prevent frustration to the
individuals incapacity to express himself and then chose the final word as the
object of focus for the games smooth continuation. Children with Downs
Syndrome have two types of expressive difficulty - delay in mastering sentence
structures and grammar, and specific difficulties in developing clear speech
production. The facilitator can also include enlarged image cards or cards with
written words, so the volunteer sitting in the middle can use what is displayed on
the card to express it in his sentence or have it displayed to the group, since their
ability to hold and process visual information is better than their ability to hold
and process verbal information due to their verbal short-term memory problems.
2. Another group of people with disabilities that I would include into this activity
would be for individuals with spinal cord injury that are paraplegic. Students with
paraplegia typically use a manual wheelchair and have full movement of arms and
hands. This would be a good activity to have participants engage with each other
to build social relationships with other and develop their psychosocial
functioning. I would adapt the activity by taking away the chairs and placing tape
marked in an X shape or having newspaper laid out on the floor so that
participants can place their wheel in the available spot or know where there is an
open space to take, when the volunteer is calls out an object.
3. Certain safety measures have to be taken as the facilitator for the sudden boost of
energy that participants might display during the activity when scooting around
looking for an available spot. If there are participants that dont appreciate or who
are disturbed by the sentence which the game is based on, it can be changed to say
something like, I like everybody who.....
4. The objectives are to learn to find humor in life situations and learn to have fun
and laugh. And by standing in front of a crowd can help people who are shy to
come out of their shell.