July Bike Parade

Today, many of our clinic kids and families met in a park to decorate bikes and wagons and celebrate the Fourth of July in Grand American Style--with a parade. It was easy to prepare kids for this event as there are many kids bike parades on You Tube such as the one featured above. Any parent who felt their child needed it, could use You Tube as a video model (a pre-teaching visual support) and let their child watch other kids in a bike parade. We also had a visual schedule, which we handed out to families as soon as they arrived. With this preparation and the intrinsic enjoyment of balloons, ribbon, and flags, our celebration event was a great success. Not all the kids ate the watermelon, which was on the schedule and so was somewhat more compelling to some children who were hesitant, but even non-watermelon fans gave the watermelon a lick. My colleague, Tamera Pogin M.A. C.C.C. SLP, and I packed up after the parade and watermelon picnic with great satisfaction as every single child seemed to have enjoyed the event.

Here is a picture of the visual schedule that we made to help children understand the events of the morning. We used Boardmaker to create this schedule: