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 months of August and September 2017.

 

 

 

 

Our first unit was What Teachers Do For Fun!

Some of our teachers take turns dressing up as Hootie our Owl mascot. For his box we put a little owl and the letters O, W, L in some birdseed.

The birdseed had a really interesting texture that the students enjoyed exploring.

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of teachers have fun at the beach! Kinetic sand is perfect for digging and making sand castles.

Lots of fun as usual!

 

 

 

 

 

 This box featured props teachers might use when participating in our annual talent show.

It was a hit!

 

 

 

 

Some teachers have fun playing with their dogs. The students had fun cutting using a dog shaped cookie cutter and some green play dough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of our teachers went to Norway and hung out with some trolls 🙂 We used grey Floam and some laminated troll cut outs to make our Troll Mountain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of our teachers love to make crafts. For them we added glitter to our shaving cream.

Shaving cream is great messy play, made even better with glitter added!

 

 

 

 

As part of Fun Day we have some fun water slides. Of course, the teachers have to try them out  🙂

Well we didn’t have any mini water slides but figured a water wheel toy would be pretty fun too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making Our Year Magical is our school wide theme. We had a lot of fun with this unit! Each of the boxes related to a different Disney movie character.

 

 

 

 

This box was filled with Mickey and Minnie items.

The mouse ears hat was a huge hit!

 

 

 

 

Our Bippity Boppity Blue moon sand had some fun Disney stamps.

Lots of fun, as usual.

 

 

 

 

 

This blue and white Prince Charming rice box had some toy knights and horses to sort and match.

There was also a picture of a prince to find at the bottom of the box.

 

 

 

 

 

These toys required muscles to make them STRETCH—-just like Hercules!

Fairy dust discovery bottles were quite popular.

Very mesmerizing.

 

 

 

 

 

We put a Little Mermaid in our water play!

Super cute!

 

 

 

 

 

Next we learned about the state of California—-one of our teachers went there for vacation so we wanted to learn a little more about it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This box contained a variety of symbols of California, all in a box of blue and yellow paper shred.

Lots to discover!

 

 

 

 

California is nicknamed the Golden State.

The students had fun digging for gold in this box.

 

 

 

 

Death Valley is the driest, hottest place in the US.

The students used funnels and scoops to explore our little version of the desert.

 

 

 

 

Astronaut Sally Ride was born in California.

In addition to a little astronaut, there were 2 stars to find in this box of spacey black beans.

 

 

 

 

 

California state colors are blue and gold…….

so we put blue and gold glitter in our shaving cream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We put some California coast sea life in our water play.

The sharks and dolphins were a hit!

 

 

 

 

In recognition of Farm Animal Awareness Week we chose Old MacDonalds farm as our theme.

The students dug up and planted some crops in our coffee grounds “dirt”.

There was also a picture of different fruits and vegetables to find at the bottom of the box.

 

 

 

They discussed which farm animals had fur and which had feathers.

We used Pixon communication boards to help with identification.

 

 

 

 

The students cut out different animals shapes out of the play dough and found farm related items in the raffia “hay”.

 

 

 

 

Lots of fun themes to start the year. See you next month 🙂