USB Drives, Card Games, and Fidgets to Improve Mental Health!
Help me give my students USB drives, card games, and outdoor play items to give them activities to help improve their mental health. In our school, mental health improvement is a huge part of the curriculum!
I teach at a therapeutic special education school serving approximately 82 students who have been unable to succeed in a general education setting due to intense emotional and behavioral needs. 100% of my students receive free lunch, making our school one of the highest poverty schools in the district. Some of our students are in foster care, experiencing homelessness, and nearly all have faced great struggles in their lives. Our school is located in an old warehouse, but I am determined to help my students reach beyond their current circumstances, with the hope of them eventually returning back to their neighborhood schools and into the general education environment.
It is often very heartbreaking to teach children as young as five who have already been pulled out of their neighborhood schools to attend a school for at-risk children with mental health issues and severe behavioral problems due to trauma.
However, because my students are so young, I am confident that my classroom can steer their behavior and academics in the right direction.
Despite so many hardships, my students are incredible children with boundless potential. Most of them have faced difficult home lives and traumas that greatly affect their behavior.
My Project
At our Special Ed school, we spend so much time to make sure our students are healthy and work diligently to improve their mental health. The USB drives will be used to play movies in the classroom. Often when our students demonstrate positive behavior or need to be calmed down, we play movies for them to enjoy. However, our computers are so so old that the movies constantly skip when we put the DVDs in them! This can be frustrating and cause students to miss major parts of the movies.
The card games will be used during social skill lesson time with the mental health practitioner for my students to focus on building positive relationships and teamwork skills.
Our mental health practitioners provide a daily 30 minute lesson to all of my students. They often like to play games with them to help the students lower their anxiety, build healthy friendships, and help those with ADHD focus better.
The teeter popper is both a fidget and an outdoor play item. The students use it to practice both balance and focus skills. They stand on it, and it tilts (it has mini suction cups on the bottom), so they have to concentrate greatly on keeping their balance so they don't fall off. We already have a few of these in my classroom, but we would LOVE more. We don't have a great outdoor space (basically just a parking lot and small playset) for recess, so active play items are amazing for my students. This toy will improve both their mental and physical health by promoting focus skills and calmness while also requiring exercise!
External CD DVD Drive with Case USB 3.0 Optical Drive Portable Slim CD RW ROM Drive Player Burner Writer Rewriter with Bag High Speed for MacBook Air Pro Laptop PC Notebook Desktops (Black)
• Amazon Business
$29.99
2
$59.98
Fat Brain Toys Teeter Popper - Green
• Amazon Business
$36.95
1
$36.95
Cardinal Giant Uno Giant Game
• Amazon Business
$19.20
1
$19.20
Mattel Games Blink – The World’s Fastest Game!
• Amazon Business
$8.14
1
$8.14
Materials cost
$124.27
Vendor shipping charges
FREE
Sales tax
$0.00
3rd party payment processing fee
$1.86
Fulfillment labor & materials
$30.00
Total project cost
$156.13
Suggested donation to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms
$27.55
Total project goal
$183.68
How we calculate what's needed
Total project goal
$183.68
1 Donor
-$62.00
Donations toward project cost
-$52.70
Donations to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms
-$9.30
match offer
-$121.68
Match offer toward project cost
-$103.43
Match offer to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. Fredrickson and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
