Christmas dinner - 7 Short 1 Long
7 Short 1 long, a restaurant in Moira, hosted a delicious christmas dinner for the youngsters of The Owl House on December 12, 2018. Around 20 youngsters joined in for the dinner. This experience gave them an opportunity to socialize with their peers and have a fine dining experience in a safe and fun environment.
The staff of the restaurant were briefed about the youngsters and were given suggestions with the menu, the seating arrangement, sensory stimuli in the form of lightings, volume of the music, etc. The youngsters were read out a social story at the centre beforehand outlining appropriate restaurant behaviour and preparing them for the dinner party. In addition to this picture cards were carried to the restaurant as visual aids to help communicate with our youngsters.
Each Owl House member was welcomed with a christmas goodie. These were either led christmas caps, santa wristbands or reindeer headbands. The christmas carols playing in the background were the perfect ice breaker for all the youngsters. It got them dancing and singing as soon as they entered the restaurant.The youngsters were seated in a group of four, accompanied by 2 facilitators each. Some of the youngsters continued dancing throughout the party while some of them were catching up on some school talks. They were served crispy french fries and chicken nuggets as starters, cheesy and hot pastas for main course, tasty fruit drinks and perfectly delicious serradura as dessert.
After the dinner the dance floor was open for some more dance where all our youngsters put their best foot forward. We all bid each other good bye with chocolates in our hands and smiles on our faces. It was indeed a fun and memorable experience for all the youngsters.
Kidspreneur
‘Kidspreneur’’, an event which was organized by ‘The Other School’ for children to have an exposure to entrepreneurship. It was going to comprise of a variety of stalls that required children to make and sell items or even assisting in selling various items such as home decor, christmas goodies, eatables and likewise. The experience was breathtaking to see children taking initiative to put together items to sell.
And the enthusiasm to set up our very own stall at the event which was called ‘Little Posro’ was overly exciting for the participants of The Owl House. Which meant planning the list of items that could be sold at the market. Some of which were decorations for the christmas tree like salt- dough ornaments, ice cream stick ornaments, christmas lanterns, gift tags, greeting cards and our version of high- end paper bags. Once we had that decided we also needed to finalise the number for each item. Thus, preparations of these items began weeks before the event.
Children from all age groups (9- 30yrs) came together at the time of workshops to make these items. We also spent few hours in the later parts of the day with older kids to make items that needed proficiency. As the event day came near, we had finally met our target of making different items and excited to move to the next step of practicing sales. We decided to organize a mock posro a day prior to the event. Individuals from The Owl House who would be managing the stall on the day of the event were called a day prior and were given information about the prices of the items and what they can do when a customer asks for information which basically involves greeting the customers, giving a bit of information about the item and also not forgetting to thank them when they are leaving. We practiced these steps and then we were ready to roll!
The event was held on December 8th, we had 6 of our older kids come at different time slots to manage their stall. The interaction between the people and our children was a sight to see. And our participants sure did well with managing their stall and sales. The event, for us was a surely success for we saw our participants take a step forward in their professional venture.