Help me give my students new materials to use outdoors during the winter. Child-sized snow shovels provide many OT benefits, and oversized magnetic builders will allow children to build and construct for hours at a time.
I teach full inclusion preschool in Newaygo County, a very rural community in West Michigan. My students are 3-5 years old and over half of my class are special needs students. Several of those students are medically fragile, while others have IEPs for Speech, OT, and/or PT.
My teaching team and I know how important daily outdoor activity is for the health and development of our students and we strive to go outside for at least an hour each day.
Outdoor play and the muscle development that comes with playing actively is especially important for my students with weak core and motor strength, we know how good being outside is for preventing illness, and the restorative power of being outdoors in green spaces is so important for the mental and physical health of the children and the adult staff.
My Project
This project would provide my students with durable child-sized snow shovels and several sets of oversized magnetic builders to use while playing outside in the winter.
During the winter, outdoor activities are more limited for my students because they cannot use many of their toys due to temperatures, frozen ground, or inaccessibility, but we still go outside each day and strive to provide them with high quality toys and materials that encourage learning and physical development.
Child-sized snow shovels are great for improving hand and arm strength, core stability, motor planning, provide heavy work for sensory-seeking children, plus they're fun! In prior years, children shoveled mazes on the playground, dug holes to hide in, and used them to push snow to create a 6 foot tall snowman, but unfortunately, the ones we had were poor quality and all have broken. The ones I chose for this project are steel handled, reinforced poly shovels made for daily use.
Oversized magnetic builders (9"x 9" each!) will provide countless opportunities for building child-sized structures, allow opportunities for children to work together in teamwork-building play, and explore the dynamics and science of construction. My students have 3"x 3" magnetic builders in the classroom and use them daily - they're definitely the favorite toy of most of my students, and the creations they make are very detailed. I can't wait to see what they come up with when they're able to make a garage that will fit their bicycles or one another!
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. Zajac and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
