About The 2024 summer program
returning to the day camp’s predecessor program, Featuring:
creative arts therapy & play
our beloved culture of love & acceptance, and
evidenced-based ultra-positive social skills training model.
Overview
Small Group Size
Four and five year-olds will be placed in groups of five with one experienced therapist and one assistant/intern. Six to eight year-olds have no more than six participants with one experienced therapist and an assistant/intern.
Group Placement
Two different groups are available for your child’s age bracket. This enables us to differentiate group placement to meet your child’s individual needs, surrounding them with well-fitting peers for comfort and success
The Daily Schedule
Creating the Team for Fun Community & Belonging
Many of Camp Pegasus’ favorite community moments & rituals are preserved at Mini Peg! We meet daily as a community to open and close each day by singing the camp anthem and goodbye songs (with their joyous call-and-response cheers). We develop a shared identity singing, “We are here together at Mini Pegasus, and we are a Team for Fun!”
Wacky Wednesdays are themed costume days that live on! We share giggles about each person’s wacky hairdo or costume and generate conversation about different interests. (No pressure if your child doesn’t want to dress up!)
Consistency Decreases Anxiety & Opens Your Child to Fun & Learning
Your child will have the same daily schedule, by design, to swiftly generate feelings of safety and trust. (check out the sample at left). From arrival through pickup, they will know exactly what to expect and when, meeting their need for predictability and consistency.
Child-Friendly Activities
Daily, your child will rotate through four periods of creative and playful peer group interaction. We are thrilled to provide Art Therapy, Music Therapy, free play with coaching, and a social lesson from Mike Fogel’s Art of Friendship Social-Coping Curriculum.
Whether your child collaborates on a group sculpture or practices following or leading a group percussion jam, these activities require no previous skill or confidence. It’s FUN! The creative arts provide child-friendly structure for interactions, tap into visual-spatial-emotional ways of thinking, and help children practice and master social skills goals in child-friendly, indirect ways.
Our experienced therapists teach the daily social lesson with funny & memorable images and language. We reinforce the social concepts and clever language throughout every moment we share with your child - and teach you how to do the same on the home front. We’re a TEAM FOR FUN!
The Mini Pegasus Team
There are four activities, each led by board certified, master’s level therapists. Art Therapists, Music Therapists, Social Workers, and Professional Counselors who specialize in treating neurodiverse children guide the groups through structured and semi-structured activities. Our most experienced therapists with expertise teaching in Mike Fogel’s visual & active Art of Friendship Social-Coping Curriculum are the social skills instructors.
The therapists are assisted by one therapy intern or undergraduate/graduate student studying human services/therapy professions.
All staff receive intensive pre-program training in the Mike Fogel’s Ultra-Positive Social Skills Training Model, developed over two decades by the Art of Friendship and Camp Pegasus.
Ingredients of Our Ultra-Positive Social Skills Training Program**
Here’s What your child experiences:
Every move we make with your child is designed to either support an area of sensory or emotional need or teach and reinforce social awareness and skills.
Targeted Positive Reflection (T.P.R.): We provide real-time, specific behavioral feedback for each positive social action your child performs, emphasizing new learned social skills. This serves three purposes: a) we transform the negative feedback loop your child may receive from the world to a positive cycle. It simply feels good for your child to receive credit for their positive social contributions; b) it names for them which helpful behavior they should repeat when they may be unaware; and c) it motivates them to repeat the helpful social behaviors!
Sloppy, Relationship-Based, Carnival-Style Token Reward System: We give tokens in real time along with the above T.P.R. to over-teach social awareness and skills. Like everyone, our participants have ingrained habits that are hard to break. Also, trying a new, learned social skill can be hard the first few times they try it. Earned tokens and daily prizes represent external motivation for the child. They help your child to think just a little harder about what they do (self-awareness!), read social cues (Theory of Mind!), and select helpful social behaviors (successful/positive socialization!). Plus, even if your child has a difficult moment here or there, they feel successful!
Compassionate Social Coaching: Instead of the frequent, direct, and unhelpful behavioral correction your child may receive in other parts of their world, we empower your child to think through and learn from social miscues and big feelings in question form. By asking your child social-coaching questions such as, “How does your friend’s face look right now, happy or unhappy?” or “What can you do to help them get back to fun?”, we give your child the gift of thinking through each social situation and making a positive plan to better handle the situation next time. Best of all, we don’t shame or punish your child for social misunderstandings or emotional outbursts (breaking the negative cycle you read about earlier).
Emphasis on Developing Self-Awareness & Self-Regulation: We provide three calming down options. If your child gets upset they can a) try to breathe and push through while continuing the activity; b) step back and pause on a comfy sofa with sensory items in their activity room; or c) step out to our quiet waiting room with staff for private space to calm. Participants get bonus tokens and T.P.R. when they make great self-regulation choices!
** Bring our comprehensive support/training approach home & share it with all your child’s educators & helpers with Mike Fogel’s first book: “The Social-Emotional Guidebook: Motivate Children With Social Challenges To Master Social & Emotional Coping Skills”.
How we support YOU - the all important parent/caregiver
The best social skills training occurs when it wraps around a child’s whole world: social skills training site, home, and school. We know that parenting a neurodiverse child comes with worry, confusion, and insecurity. We’re here for you.
During the summer program, we provide you with specialized training to empower you to ideally support your unique child.
You will receive a daily email summarizing the social lesson your child learned with cuing language and tips about how you can reinforce it at home.
Each session, Mike Fogel will provide a free parent seminar teaching you a critical module of the above Ultra-Positive Social Skills Training Program.
Even beyond the end of the summer, as we get to intimately know your child’s strengths and needs, and as we form a great collaborative relationship with you, we can provide ongoing consultation and therapy for your child to help you navigate your child’s present and future needs,