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.
This post has photos of our middle and high school students enjoying the books and cart during September.
So lets get this party started!
Our first unit was based on following school rules such as listening.
The students had fun exploring toys that made noise and those that were quiet.
Another school rule is playing safely with equipment—-such as keeping materials inside the boxes.
Especially important with water!
Taking turns with massagers was a blast!
Demonstrating raising your hand is especially fun if you are catching bubbles.
Our next theme was related to the Unique Curriculum theme of government.
The students had so much fun exploring wind energy using fans found in the department of energy box. This box was a real favorite.
It was all about the money with the Department of Treasury box!
Floam was used to make replicas of the White House!
Our Jobs with Hats unit had lots of really fun boxes to explore.
The mariachi musician box had a maraca, shiny beads and a music recorded on a voice output device had the students rocking out 🙂
They had a blast!!!!
Blue flashing light batons in the police officer box were really fascinating.
Pretty cool!
Of course, the football player box with both pom poms and a football was a BIG hit!
These students had fun showing off their ball handling skills.
And these students showed us how to cheer for the home team!
GO TEAM!!!
The construction box, as with all our boxes, encourage communication skills practice.
There were lots of things to discover in the cowboy box, including animal figures that made noise when buttons were pressed.
Pop rocks were added magic to our oobleck—–although some of the students were not so sure about it 🙂
The students had lots of fun experimenting with the large syringe in our firefighter water box.
Our next topic was pretty unusual but really interesting—–Pets in Politics. We learned a lot about the pets of famous politicians. This unit was especially popular!
The French president has a camel!
Our students searched for camels in red, white, and blue rice which are the colors of the French flag.
They had lots of fun with President Jackson’s parrot named Poll!
The students got a kick out of the big plush parrot!
And they TOTALLY rocked the feather boas 🙂
Black play dough was perfect for making Bo, President Obama’s dog!
It is also a great activity for hand strengthening.
Can you tell, the play dough was popular 🙂
Our Socks the Cat box was all about similarities and differences in materials—–hard, soft, white, black!
A cute plush cat and lots of great textures to explore.
There was a fun plush corgi puppet and a fabulous British flag banner in this box—-Queen Elizabeth’s favorite pets are her corgis!
John Quincy Adams owned an alligator! There were plants and alligators to find in the jello swamp. Some of our students thought it was very inviting to touch……
…………others not so much 🙂
Hands were rinsed in cherry blossom scented water. There were also 2 “gobi” fish—-Emperor Akihito of Japan is an expert on them!
And just a reminder, not only are our boxes filled with fun but there is lots of learning going on. Here are 2 very diligent students answering questions about the boxes they have just explored!
Hope you enjoyed seeing our fabulous students. We will back next month with another After Party!
Group by Group 
My colleague and I are creating a professional development workshop for other educators in our state about “Digital Literacy” resources. We use so many of your wonderful resources on a regular basis. Would it be alright with you if we referenced your blog and showed our participants how we use your resources during our presentation?
Kind Regards,
Tricia Sharkey
Tricia, we would be honored to be included!