"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I earn, whatever sate I may be in therein to be content". This famous quote by Helen Keller is very powerful to me as a attempt to educate a child with deaf blindness in my preschool special education classroom.
We are a non categorical preschool special education classroom of 8 children ranging in age from 3-5 years.
The children present with varying disabilities to include Autism, Downs Syndrome, Deaf Blindness and Selective Mutism. The children attend school 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. The children benefit from the inclusion of peer models, which are typical children from the community that attend on a regular basis to provide appropriate language, social and adaptive skill models. Our county offers the related services of speech and language, occupational and physical therapy to the children within their school day. The program is housed within a neighborhood elementary school and the preschool children participate in all activities within the school environment.
My Project
We are requesting an I Pod player for a specific child within our group - Child M. M. presents with deaf blindness which makes it very difficult for her to operate in an integrated classroom setting. Due to her decreased sensory processing, she becomes upset and disorganized in larger noisy environments. Many times during the day, we have to remove her from the classroom because she is disruptive to the other children in the classroom. She calms quickly to singing voices and music - we often walk her into a quieter room and turn on a CD player. Once she is calm and quiet, she is able to return to the classroom and resume participating in the learning activities. Our challenge lies in constantly having to transition her out of and in to the classroom. If we were able to offer her a means of self calming within the classroom environment, this transition could be eliminated.
M.
desperately needs a way to remain within the preschool classroom in order to access the curriculum and appropriate learning activities. Currently, the other children are distracted by M.'s disruptive behaviors. An I Pod will allow M. to remain with her peers and be an active member of the classroom environment because the Music will clam and soothe her. The I pod will also be connected to a switch operated device which M. can operate independently.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. A. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.