Welcome to the After Party! Each week after the weekly blog featuring activities in the elementary department is posted, our sensory cart is parked in the media center where it is available for check out by the rest of the school.
Here are photos teachers have sent of their students exploring the different sensory boxes during the month of March—–enjoy!
We started the month celebrating the birthday of Dr. Seuss!
The “If I Ran the Zoo” box had a variety of animals in a box filled with sawdust. The sawdust had a really interesting texture that was intriguing to the students.
They also matched letters in the colorful ABC box.
Shaker pom poms made a great stand in for Truffula trees!
Bright, colorful—-so much fun to shake!
Using green Floam, the students made the own version of The Grinch.
Another intriguing texture!
Of course we had Oobleck!
Just cornstarch and water but always a big hit with the students!
In a box of paper shred (a nod to books) there were lots of Seussical things—-
representing lots of different Dr. Seuss books.
The box also contained a very popular hat 🙂
This unit was so much fun!
We celebrated Youth Art Month by learning about some famous artists.
Mondrian used primary colors in his grid paintings.
For his box we had the students sort primary colored pompoms.
Kinetic sand made for a perfect desert landscape for our Dali box.
It even had some melting clocks!
Our starry, starry night play dough was so pretty—-Van Gogh would be proud we think!
There were 2 different sized star shaped cookie cutters for the students to use.
Harold Newton became famous painting pictures of Florida.
We put lots of symbols of the state in this box.
Ian Falconer illustrates the Olivia book series. We thought pink sand was perfect for this box.
The students really loved the soft feel of this sand and watching it drift through the sifter.
Alexander Calder made mobiles using different shapes.
The students were encouraged to draw shapes in shaving foam—-circles were a popular choice!
J. Turner was famous for painting ocean scenes—–perhaps he would have liked our little ocean scene 🙂
Plumeria was our scent this week since Georgia O’Keefe painted a picture of them. The students really liked the scent!
Next we learned about the country of Israel—-one of our nurses recently traveled there and brought back lots of wonderful pictures and other goodies to share with us!
To travel there she had to fly in an airplane. We simulated the flight by using a vibrating massager and airplane sounds recorded on a voice output device.
The massager was a real hit with the students—–
they loved it!
We learned that Isreal has one coral reef in Eilat.
We used pink Floam to represent the coral and put in a variety of fish and silk flowers to decorate it.
The students had a lot of fun making their coral reefs.
Very eye catching and a very interesting texture to explore!
They also rebuilt some ruins in the Negev desert.
The wooden camel was one of the things Nurse Jill brought back for us!
The Dead Sea is very salty so one of our boxes was filled with salt.
We added a funnel and a map of Israel at the bottom of the box.
We colored the rice blue and white like the colors of the Israeli flag. We put in letter I’s for the students to find.
There was a picture of the flag at the bottom on the box.
During Sukkot children sleep in huts decorated with fairy lights.
We made our own version with a lighted umbrella.
It was a real hit with all the students!
There were fish to catch in our “Mediterranean” Sea
using a sifter instead of a net.
Our final theme for March was the History of Basketball.
The students learned about the founder of the sport James Naismith who was a physician and educator from Canada.
This box had lots of interesting items representing facts about him.
Here they sorted 5 objects of 2 different colors. This represented the 2 teams of 5 players each that play a game of basketball.
In addition to sorting,
there were lots of different textures to explore!
Colorful chenille stems represented the Olympics and colorful beads represented the NBA.
Both organizations associated with basketball.
This bright orange play dough was very eye-catching.
Fun smash, roll, or use a cookie cutter to cut out letter “B”.
Food coloring helped make our shaving cream almost basketball orange 🙂
The students worked on drawing circles.
Hands were rinsed in peach scented waters.
2 or 3 “points” could be scooped up with a large measuring cup.
We finished with matching peach scented lotion—-peach baskets were the first hoops in the game!
That wraps up March—-we will be back next month for another After Party, Group by Group style!