Canberra/Thredbo Excursion

Recently Missy went on another annual 3 day excursion with school, this year they went to Canberra. On the first day, they saw Parliament House(very boring - was the report there), Capital Exhibition, Questacon(great report there) they then travelled to Cooma for the night and got prepared for their day on the snow at Thredbo. Day 2 saw them head off for a great day in the very snowy conditions, we had joined Missy up to the Disabled Wintersport Association, so she could have a sit ski lesson while the other kids had there lesson alongside her. Of course Missy's fearless attitude to speedy sports put her in good stead for a fun day. The 50 kids arrived back to Cooma after a full day on the snow fields - wet and tired. Day 3 saw them head back to Canberra via the Snowy Hydro Scheme and the AIS and were home by 5.30pm.
Missy said it was the best excursion yet, it was full-on packed of venues to see, learn and have fun at. Lots of organising goes into these excursions and our family always appreciates the teachers and aide that help pre-organise as much as possible and of course their effort throughout the excursion. Missy took three types of chairs with her, a couple of ramps for those unexpected steps, her gear filled up one whole bay under the bus while the other 49 kids had two bays under the bus.
A real special touch after this excursion was a DVD that her teacher had made for all the kids, which was packed with photos of their adventures.

These wonderful inclusive school excursions just provide such awesome peer group experiences and lifelong memories.

Anything can be adapted with some initiative

The video shown here is a snippet of Friday sport at Missy's Mainstream school on a snowy day.  Sit down Soccer is chosen at the indoor sport where the kids sit on their bottom and scoot around the floor to kick & pass to score goals.  While the kids are on the floor, Missy is still up in her chair and wants to be on the floor with the kids, the surface is too hard for her to sit unaided and moving around would be difficult. So  out comes some inclusive initiative headed up by her Aide Miss H. Her teacher's jumper is put on the polished floor, a large sports container is put on that, the kids throw their jumpers in the container and Missy sits in, a rope is thrown around the container and off she goes, one kid pulling at the front and another pushing at the back, all the time Missy is wildly kicking her legs just waiting for that soccer ball to come her way.
Inclusion is not expensive or hard just requires some thinking outside the box or in this case inside the box.