Aaron’s Building Community Mix
Making New Friends
In my previous post: St. Nick| Community Building and Batman Socks, I talked about using the folk-story Stone Soup to begin a discussion about differences, scarcity, gifts and building a community.
To avert our St. Nick kindergarten disaster, the next day I brought in the ingredients for our Building Community Mix.
With other groups, I’ve made stone soup in a crock pot or adapted the activity in a couple different ways. One time, I had everyone bring in a piece of fruit and we made a community fruit salad. But the biggest success was always making Community Building Mix.
Each of the children participated and added their ingredient into our community pot–which was a large empty popcorn tin. Each student took a turn stirring and then rolling the tin to “cook” the ingredients. We shared our “Soup” and filled an extra baggie to give to a stranger, a child they didn’t know that attended our school.
The actual recipe is just a takeoff of ole Trail Mix.
It becomes a community building activity when each person in the group brings in one ingredient for a shared experience of working together.
I have used this activity with all age groups: pre-schoolers, special education students, Boy Scouts, university students, teachers, senior citizens…. A friend even used it with her Ladies’ Church Group as their culminating activity of friendship and sharing after a month long Bible Study.
It has also worked well for many holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Birthdays, Summer Camp…
Great Holiday Gift Idea
It also works great as a homemade gift.
Aaron, my son who has the label of autism and intellectual disabilities, gave this as his annual teacher gift (one to each of his teachers, school secretaries, bus drivers, job coaches, therapists….). Since we wanted to include and thank as many people as possible, and have the gift be something that would enhance Aaron’s status as a person with skills and talents, this was perfect.
Twenty years later, his high school teacher still talks about “the mix.” It was a great way of thanking all the people in Aaron’s school or work community. And he got to be an active part of making it.
Partial Participation
In a related post I talked about how Tommy and Aaron “partially participated” in making Halloween treats.
Aaron
Aaron would “partially participate” by picking out the items at the grocery (his favorite were M&Ms), dumping the ingredients into the large popcorn tin. (Tape the lid on the tin.) He would roll the tin around to mix it up. Aaron would also help put the sticker: Aaron’s Holiday Mix on the top of the small holiday tin containers, snack bag, paper cups or plastic containers.
Tommy
Tommy would also help pick out the ingredients in the store (he favored Skittles). His job was to help stop Mom and Aaron from eating the M&Ms, as well as scooping the mix with a large ladle into the containers.
Since Aaron had fine motor issues and Tommy had great fine motor skills this worked out well. Each of the boys got to use their skills to make the mix.
Building Community Snack Mix
Box of Granola
Package of Mixed Dried Fruit Bits (found near the raisins in the grocery)
Raisins
Can of nuts
Pretzels, broken
M & M’s, chocolate chips, or Skittles
Other ingredients could be marshmallows, coconut, peanut butter chips, white chocolate, popcorn, cheese fish or crackers….Invite your friends over and ask each to bring one ingredient.
Get out your biggest bowl, or put in a large popcorn tin (tape it shut). Combine all ingredients by shaking or stirring. Ladle into paper cups, plastic baggies, or in bowls. This is a great recipe for lunch snacks, parties, and teacher’s gifts. The mixed dried fruit bits are the magic ingredient.
Add Your Comments:
Have you used any similar experiences to build friendships, share gifts? Have you used “partial participation” to include others with various levels of skills? Is this an activity you can use?
Keep Climbing: Onward and Upward
All my best, Mary