Hello from the Next Steppers! We are having a great day and are enjoying the beautiful snow! We tried to walk and get a coffee but the sidewalks were covered in snow and we didn't think we could safely walk all the way to Dunkin Donuts, so instead we came back to STRIVE and made tea. We did stop to take a picture in the snow, however!



This morning and afternoon the group has been working very hard to write an article about our movie premiere social event last Friday. We worked in small group to write individual paragraphs about the event and our preparations, and then we worked as a team to put it all together. Here is the article written by the students. Enjoy!

We are going to tell you how we planned for the movie premiere/party.  We made the movie a long time before we did all of the other things.  We made the movie to help us practice our social skills.  We brainstormed who was doing what. Before we went shopping, we brainstormed what kind of food we wanted to have.  We looked up prices of the food to see how much it cost.  We work on budgets in Next Step to help us learn how to make money decisions.  We went to Wal-Mart and bought the food and decorations.  We figured out the date and time for the invitations and then made them.  We invited our parents, the Day-Hab group, and STRIVE staff. 


This is Patrick with his sister and his mother.


These are some of our guests from the Day-Hab program.


This is Patrick with Pete, one of the STRIVE directors.

We made a social skills video and we tried out our skills at the party.  We practiced greeting people and we also said thank you to the people who were coming. We also talked about wearing nice clothes. We wanted to be well dressed up for our social skills party to look nice for our guests and to make a good impression on our guests.


Patrick and Yvonne are greeting Pete and Erin.


Here are some group members wearing very nice clothes and greeting their guests.

The room looked like a movie theater.  We put the chairs in order.  We moved the tables to the back of the room.  The room had stars and a red carpet.  The smartboard had a Next Step background with stars on it.  Our guests stood in front of the smart board to take pictures.  The room had popcorn and tootsie rolls and sparkling cider.  The room looked like Hollywood because it felt kind of special.  Jim stood up in front of everyone and introduced the video.  He told people that we made the video because we’ve been working on our social skills.  When the video was over, everyone clapped.  Sophie shared that her mom really enjoyed the video.  Jim’s family even wants a copy on DVD.  Everybody did a good job helping with the party decorations, the food committee, and the invitations.  We feel pretty proud of ourselves. 

This is how we set up the chairs like a movie theater.


This is Dianna proudly showing off our stars and red carpet.


Sophie's mother really enjoyed the event and was proud of Sophie.


Here is the whole group! Rory was able to come to our social skills movie premiere and we were happy to see her! We were all proud of ourselves because we did an awesome job on our event and our movie.