“Throughout the past year of working at Club GiGi, I had never heard one of our participants, Thomas, say more than one or two words at a time.  He is a very happy, friendly member of our group, but when we all share about our weekends, he typically chooses not to speak out loud.  However,…

  Max, featured in a previous blog, continues to grow and flourish, especially as it relates to experiencing new environments.  The June session of Dynamic Duals, a collaboration between the Madison Area Down Syndrome Society and GiGi’s-Madison, was held off site at Country Creek Learning Center, a preschool located on a 5-acre site about 30…

JOVI and MISA:  Jovi and his brother Misa have attended Dynamic Duals, a collaboration between the Madison Area Down Syndrome Society and GiGi’s-Madison for many months. Both participated in a recent session held offsite at Country Creek Learning Center, a preschool, located on a 5-acre site about 30 minutes from the Playhouse.  Although the original plan…

Meet our amazing summer intern: Courtney T. I am finishing up my last semester with a major in Rehabilitation Psychology and a minor in Promoting Activities for Diverse Abilities! I started tutoring at GiGi’s in the Spring of 2019 and I fell in love with being able to use my creative side to ignite a…

The first month of GiGi Prep has been exhilarating, fun, and productive! We have welcomed a variety of visitors to our Prep class. We’ve learned from them and they’ve learned from us. We all share leadership of activities and when visitors join our class, we have them join right in– and they learn, as we previously…

Best of All Moment: During the spring session of the adult SMART program, the emphasis had been on “Numbers in Everyday Life.” During the program group meetings, we had activities concerning numeral recognition, one-on-one correspondence, object counting, continuing a number sequence and the like. One of the favorite activities was the group game called “Ten.”…

Meet Meghan Reistad at our Gala “i have a Voice” on October 25th, 2019 at the Lake Windsor Country Club. We are honored to have Meghan as our MC that evening! Meghan is an early riser as a morning anchor for NBC15. She joined the WMTV team in November 2016 and launched a new newscast…

    Meet our special guest speaker who will talk at our Gala “i have a Voice” on October 25, 2019 at the Lake Windsor Country Club: Dan Coppola! Dan Coppola grew up in Monona, WI – the second of seven kids. From an early age he was hooked on bikes, and by the time I…

The Playhouse, in collaboration with Madison Area Down Syndrome Society (MADSS), and support for program development from GiGi’s, INC. has been piloting a program for families who have loved ones with the dual diagnoses of Down syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder and or sensory/behavioral challenges.  Parents meet separately while participants and siblings are engaged in…

Tara has been volunteering at GiGi’s Playhouse Madison since December. Since then she has become an integral part of our Playhouse. Tara is a senior at UW- Madison studying rehabilitation psychology, with hopes of going to occupational therapy school in the next few years. Tara is a dancer and baton twirler, and recently got certified to…