Our older students have the opportunity to go out into the community on a regular basis to practice independent functioning, communication, social, and academic skills. We call this Community Based Instruction. Our sensory groups explored boxes related to the different community locations. The fine motor groups made some fun art projects and the language group made frozen treats you might buy while out and about!
SENSORY GROUP
Students used cookie cutters to stamp B U S into school bus yellow moon sand.
School buses are used to transport the students to their various CBI destinations.
Science access point: apply a push to move an object.
Blue and white rice represented one of the most popular CBI locations—— Walmart! There was a picture of a bus and another of a Walmart store to find at the bottom of the box.
There were also two different sized spoons to use for scooping fun!
Math access point: recognize differences in size of objects.
Another popular location is the Publix grocery store. Here the students purchase food/snacks for themselves or classroom activities.
We put a variety of fun food items—–some of which made noise when squeezed!
Science access point: recognize and respond to different types of sensory stimuli.
When going shopping, the one thing you need is MONEY!
There were different play money coins to find buried in this box of multicolored beans.
Science access point: recognize coins as money.
Sometimes our students get to participate in sporting events—-such as bowling or basketball.
We thought that making balls out of bright yellow Floam would be a great representation of those activities.
Math access point: recognize a common three-dimensional object.
Messy play represented the Community Arts program. We put some drops of food coloring in the shaving foam and let our artistic students mix it together.
This was a lot of fun but made for some multi-coloring fingers when done 🙂
Science access point: recognize a change in an object.
Many of our parks have a lake or water feature. Our water feature contained the letters C B I to scoop up. We also included some fun scoops.
Messy hands sometimes made some very colorful rinsing water!
Math access point: recognize differences in sizes of containers that hold liquids.
Bath and Body Works vanilla sugar scent reminded us of some yummy Publix cookies 🙂
It was definitely a hit!
Science access point: recognize one or more external body parts.
FINE MOTOR GROUP
On Wednesday the students made a CBI map.
First, they identified the shape of their paper and the color of their marker.
Math access point: recognize an object with a two-dimensional shape.
Science access point: identify objects with one observable property, such as color.
They used the black marker to scribble roads on their maps.
Science access point: recognize that pushing and pulling an object makes it move.
Next, they used a paper cutter or scissors to cut out some of the most popular CBI stops.
Science access point: recognize a change in an object.
They glued the pictures and a school bus (cut from the Ellison machine) on to their maps.
Math access point: recognize when an object has been added to a situation.
TA DA!!!
We are ready……..
……..let’s go on CBI.
On Thursday the students made chicken nuggets—-a favorite treat to pick up on CBI.
First, the students identified the number 3 and the shape of our plate.
Math access point: associate quantities of number names.
Math access point: recognize an object with a two-dimensional shape.
Next, we mixed some rice krispies into our paint to give it texture and painted our 3 nuggets.
Science access point: recognize that pushing and pulling an object makes it move.
Since it is nice to have a little dipping sauce, we tinted some corn syrup and dripped a little of that on to the nuggets 🙂
The corn syrup will dry to a glassy finish.
Science access point: track objects that fall to the ground.
TA DA!!!
Chicken nuggets—-YUMMY!!!
LANGUAGE GROUP
Since shopping can tire us out, we made our own icees using this recipe: Let’s Make Strawberry Lemonade Icees
First we PUT 6 cups of ice into the blender. We talked about the ice being COLD and why it was cold.
Each student got to HELP PUT some ice in the blender.
Next, we PUT some water into the blender. We were going to TURN it on, but we saw that something was wrong.
Our students had to indicate that we needed the top on first. We turned it on to crush up the ice some.
Then, we added some lemonade mix. We observed that the color of our ice water was changing to a DIFFERENT color.
Finally, we PUT some strawberries with sugar into the blender. Time to mix it up!
Each student got to HELP press the switch to TURN on the blender.
Once it was ALL DONE, each student had to request an icee by indicating and/or saying WANT or DRINK. They would also have to indicate that they wanted MORE.
Students told us if they thought the drink tasted SWEET or SOUR.
These were very tasty! A good treat for all 🙂
It was a great week! Join us again next time for more fun and learning—–Group by Group!
Don’t forget to check you SPAM folder for your confirmation email if you want to follow us.