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Growth and Motor Development students setting up an activity station at St.Amant's Leisure Guide Wind-Up Celebration // photo supplied

Creating fun for everyone

Growth and Motor Development students create & deliever inclusive activities for St.Amant community

November 24, 2017 — 

School fieldtrips are pretty great. So is making someone’s day. The two of them together? An unbeatable combination.

On Saturday, Nov. 18, students in our Growth and Motor Development course set up and organized a range of activities at St.Amant, an organization that offers a wide range of programs and services to support individuals and their families.

The activities, as part of St.Amant’s Leisure Guide Wind-Up Celebration, were designed by the students to facilitate motor skill development in a fun and inclusive environment for members of St.Amant’s community—a community with a wide range of physical and cognitive abilities.

The course instructor, Dr Cheryl Glazebrook, says an exercise such as this really brings learning to life.

“There’s a different amount of planning involved when your creating an activity or program that real people are actually going to do, versus crafting an activity for a hypothetical situation,” says Glazebrook, a leading expert in the field of motor control and learning.

“It also allows them to connect some of the things we’re learning in the classroom and to deliver the activity.”

“It also allows them to connect some of the things we’re learning in the classroom and to deliver the activity, and to work in a safe environment with an extremely broad range of abilities.”  

This is the second year Glazebrook’s class has engaged in this exercise.

Ten stations were set-up in the St.Amant gym. One of note, called Dinosaur walking, was an activity where participants taped dinosaur feet to their own and walked in anyway they could.

“There were countless smiles from students and participants who had fun engaging in a wide range of activities. This wasn’t about rehab. It was about creating leisure and fun,” Glazebrook adds.

About 40 participants, plus their caregivers, took part in this event.

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