MORGANTOWN –Therapy Services LLC wrapped up their yearly summer camp Wednesday. The theme this year revolved around video games, titled Ralph Breaks Summer Camp after the Pixar Film “Wreck it Ralph.”
The kids made Mario and Luigi hats and sported stick on mustaches before snack time. Sticking with the Mario theme, they made piranha plants with toilet paper serving as the tube. There was also a Yoshi egg hunt, where the kids had to find plastic eggs with gold coins inside.
Abby Dragovich, an Occupational Therapist said camps is fun and games, but they also work on physical therapy, speech and motor activities.
“We just try to pick a theme and make it a little bit more exciting than their typical – usually we do one-on-one sessions, sometimes we do group sessions but not a lot of them,” said Dragovich.
She said adding that summer camp aspect and socializing with other kids is important because many of the “campers” spend their time doing solo therapy.
“We always make them do some jumping. We always make them do fine motor stuff – tracing writing their names, cutting that sort of stuff,” said Dragovich.
Some of the children have diagnoses like autism, OCD, anxiety or just general developmental delays.
“Everybody here is coming for a reason,” she said.
The kids really pushed for the theme of video games. Dragovich said they come in all the time talking about Mario or Fortnite so she wanted the theme to be something that was of interest to the campers.
“We did a vote actually on the theme. We picked like five and this is the one that came out to be the most popular by a landslide,” she said.
She said she tried to make camp and the theme interesting to keep them entertained. She said the socialization aspect of camp teaches them about life.
“Everyday life is not structured. Generally speaking it’s not structured, it’s not like that. I think being in an environment like this around different people that they’re not used to brings them out of their shell,” she said.
As an occupational therapist, Dragovich made the campers interact with a lot of sensory items such as glitter, glue or water beads.
Though having 16 kids to look after can understandably get a little hectic, Dragovich said she’s going to miss the campers. Last year they hosted only 4 campers and it was exciting to see such a large turnout.
“The kids love it no matter how hard it is to organize. We’re going to do it again next year for sure and this year was a great year,” she said.
