The Las Floristas Recreational Therapy program is designed to enhance children’s lives during their inpatient stay. Children often get the first glance at their future outside the hospital environment and the possibilities ahead. This includes activities both inside and outside of the hospital while they are still inpatients. These experiences work together to give children experiences with navigating the world around them and feeling confident in their life after injury or illness. A very important component is the inclusion of the patient’s family in these activities so that everyone is comfortable recreating safe play environments for the child when they return home.

Socialization programs include creative expressive groups, leisure counseling sessions, leisure education, and tabletop activities that increase peer relations and acceptance for the child/teenager. Which helps to create a sense of normalcy in the patient’s environment while hospitalized for a catastrophic event.

Within the hospital, programs focus on fun experiences that also provide therapeutic benefits. This includes board games, video games, age-appropriate physical play (including an outdoor playground and an indoor ball pit), summer BBQs,

Outside of the hospital, inpatients and their families are taken on local excursions in a retrofitted van that was funded by Las Floristas. Kids are taken to out to help them assimilate back into the public and feel confident in their surroundings. Excursions can include bowling, shopping centers, restaurants, and even Disneyland.

In addition, Las Floristas hosts on-campus clinic parties a few times each year with the current inpatients. These fun parties always include a fun activity that promotes hand-eye coordination and concentration and is usually matched to a seasonal holiday such as pumpkin carving at Halloween. This provides an opportunity for the members of Las Floristas to get hands-on experience working with patients at Rancho, and so see firsthand the fruits of their fundraising efforts.