My classroom is a self-contained special education classroom for preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorders. We adapt the preschool curriculum to meet the diverse needs of the students and to increase opportunities to work on social, communication, and academic skills. It is my goal to find materials and activities to help motivate and engage my students to participate in classroom activities and to increase interactions with each other.
Preschoolers love to come to school to play, learn, and meet new friends, but some kids have barriers that make it hard to enjoy and participate in these activities without support.
The students in this classroom have high level needs, and they are not yet able to participate in a preschool classroom with a larger group of students. They need a structured environment, with a small number of students and many direct teaching opportunities. The school is located in an urban setting, and serves many children who qualify for free or reduced rate lunch. The district has limited funding and early childhood programs rarely receive the materials they need. Many times we need to create or purchase materials on our own in order to have the materials we need.
My Project
The materials in my project will help provide exciting and motivating learning activities in my classroom in order to engage my students and increase academic skills and exploration. These materials provide hands-on opportunities to work on problem solving, building, visual representation, and basic engineering skills.
Through engaging and hands-on STEM materials, the students will be excited to participate in classroom activities and will learn the skills necessary to enter Kindergarten.
This project includes create-a-path magnetic center and engineer-a-coaster set in order to build, explore, and work on problem solving skills. The blocks and blueprint game and survive the quake engineering kit provides opportunities to work with a friend, trial and error building, and visual representational skills. The motion discovery tubes help students learn and explore about how different materials move and different speeds through the many textures. Preschoolers should have lots of opportunities to explore with different STEM toys in order to create excitement and curiosity in their learning, engage in problem solving skills, and to increase their knowledge in science and math.
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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 Ms. Rodenkirchen and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
