Mad Science

I will be the first to admit, I love Halloween and always have. Some of my fondest memories from my childhood are of making my own costumes and going out on crisp fall nights to trick or treat, watching the Walt Disney Halloween special, and trading candy with my brother. Now that I'm all grown up, and don't have kids of my own, I generally get my Halloween fix with my students. I have a huge box of props, manipulatives, and toys. I think I must own every Halloween-themed kids' CD out there (my paras counted today and I think they came up with 10; that doesn't count what I've downloaded to itunes). We typically do lots of Halloween-related activities like going to the local pumpkin patch, carving a pumpkin and playing in pumpkin guts (fun!), designing our own costumes (last year's favorite was a pirate complete with a pirate ship-stroller and a treasure chest treat box, oh, and the parrot, can't forget the parrot), and having a Halloween party. This year we have decided to have a Mad Scientist party instead of the more traditional Halloween classroom party. This came about for several reasons. First, Lon Thornburg of No Limits to Learning fame is sponsoring a "Mad Scientist" theme for October's Assistive Technology Blog Carnival and I really wanted to enter it so got "inspired." Second, I have at least one student whose family does not "do" Halloween so we always have to adapt. I've been fortunate that these families have not asked me to restrict the Halloween fun for the other students (and staff), but they prefer that their child do non-Halloween activities. Third, at the middle school level we are constantly striving to "age up" the kids' activities. So often they seem "stuck" at a preschool interest level and to some extent we allow them to appreciate their favorites (tops right now are Handy Manny, Tigger and Pooh, and SpongeBob). However, we also expose them to as much of the pre-teen/teen culture as we can. The Girls and I all agreed that a Mad Scientist party would not only be fun, but could work to meet a lot of our goals with the kids and still let us enjoy Halloween fun without tromping on anyone's beliefs. I mean, what middle schooler wouldn't want to dress in weird clothes, listen to loud music, and play with weird concoctions? Pretty much an average day around our school.

We had to get creative with our activities to accommodate the kids' sensory issues, especially with science experiments. The exploding volcano project (which would be cool coming out of a beaker) just would not be a big hit with so many kids with vision impairments and I don't think anyone would get the rubber chicken bone thing. Here are the activities we have planned and the assistive technology we will use to support the kids in all the fun:

Ahead of time
Reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in audio book format

Watching Young Frankenstein just for kicks (that will be on swimming day) complete with our own versions of the sound effects or "movie watching" social scripts programmed onto Step-by-Steps (Chloe and I would rather do a fun interactive version of Rocky Horror Picture Show but somehow I don't think that would fly real well; maybe I'll snag her and go to the Orpheum Theater in Wichita to do the real thing)

On the day
Dress up as mad scientists with wigs, gloves, and other props (we have a nurse and a trauma surgeon in our parent collection so I'm sure we'll get some good donations to the cause)

Sensory story on the Smart board based loosely on The Monster Lab Game and work by some folks in the UK (The Advisory Unit Plasma Screen and Whiteboard Room is definitely worth a visit!); the kids will have step-by-steps for appropriate sound effects, use the Smartboard or a jelly beamer to turn the page on whichever software product I decide to use (Boardmaker, Intellitools, SwitchIt!, or powerpoint), and explore all the smelly and ooey gooey props that go along with the story. This will take the place of our usual Morning Meeting activities

Play with a host of "Laboratory Equipment" like a static ball, different light toys, exploring sound effects and creepy music, and "beakers" with different things inside

Cook lunch which will probably be spaghetti and meat sauce (so we can use some of the spaghetti in the sensory story of course) and our favorite pumpkin pudding; I'll have to come up with an appropriate name of course. Hey! Green beans would make good "fingers," hmmm...

Do a Mad Science Experiment, probably making "oobleck" with bright colors (3 parts cornstarch to 2 parts water; fun stuff to play with); I think a mixer (adapted with powerlink) will work with this stuff; guess we'll find out!

Create our own "Frankenstein's Monsters" or robots and use our communication devices to make choices, adapted scissors to cut, etc.

Do the "Spooky Hooky," our version of the Hokey Pokey. The kids use either pictures or step scanning to choose what body parts to shake shake shake

That will probably fill up our day. I doubt we do any "trick or treating" as most of the kids either don't eat by mouth or have dietary restrictions that mean no candy allowed. We'll also create the right "atmosphere" with one of our creepy sounds CDs playing through the surround sound (including the itunes visualizer on the wall) and props set around the room, given I can find some "on the cheap." I'm sure the science teacher next door and the school resource officer will also make an appearance. They go all out for Halloween. At least they don't Vaseline my door handle anymore (learned their lesson after one of the kids ate the stuff! Kid is OK, adults a little sheepish).

I will post photos after the Big Event but wanted to get the initial post done in time for the Blog Carnival (submissions are due Oct. 27). Who knows? We might inspire you to have some Mad Science fun, or maybe you have some ideas to contribute to make our day even better. Consider submitting your own entry to the Carnival. It's painless and NOT SCARY AT ALL. It's a terrific way to share and to get word out about your blog.

Still More Mad Science

Thought I'd share our mad science preparations in this post so the next post doesn't get so long. This is our classroom door. Found the door curtain at Oriental Trading.

We spent the end of the day transforming our "work" area into a "Laboratory." I don't know who had more fun: the kids who were watching the video Young Frankenstein (a couple of the kids were doing awesome imitations of the monster noises and then laughing and laughing; another kept activating step-by-step that had various screams recorded on it; it was all too funny!) or the adults who were playing with a variety of solutions and mixtures and concoctions to create the lab (more on that later). The cabinets and table are covered in white shower curtain liners left over from our sensory room make over.

Here is the "Nevermore" raven I found at Party City keeping watch over the tray of monster parts for the sensory story. Below are a bunch of sensory bottles (more info below) and other creepy lab experiments including Alien Slime (awesome stuff! It's even scented!) and a variety of test tubes and beakers (really intended for sand art but for the price they were perfect for us).

Another view of our "experiments" including the Mad Lab Kit, and a color changing brain and heart. I picked up the electo-static ball years ago at Wal-Mart. I stuck one of our other "mood" lights up there too, just to add to the effect.

The large flask has green tinted water with ping pong eyeballs. The flask on top of the "burner" has purple tinted water with dish soap suds.

A closer view of the sensory bottles and Alien Slime.

I got the idea for the sensory bottles from http://www.kinderfriends.com/discoverybottles.html and then went my own direction. They are concoctions of various combinations of water, Karo syrup, baby oil, dish soap, and hair gel (the orange ones) with food coloring, glitter, confetti, and small objects added in (the orange bottle in front has hair gel and rubber eye balls). One or two just have loose beads inside so they rattle. We used the same technique to fill most of the flasks, beakers, and test tubes. They turn out really cool and the kids have fun manipulating them and watching what happens when you turn them over. I used Gorilla Glue to secure the lids to the tops of the bottles for safety. I left the flasks and test tubes open so we could recycle them but the kids won't get to play with most of those.

It's Party Time!

Mad Scientist Party Time, that is. Yes, we are once again doing a Mad Science party for Halloween. We had a blast last year and are looking forward to another fun time. The beauty is that all the planning is done (yay me!). I tweaked the Monster Lab sensory story I wrote last year just a bit (comment if you want a copy; my 4Shared account closed because I didn't use it enough). One of my paras is donating some very cool decorations to the cause and everyone is busily preparing their costume ideas.

In preparation for the Big Event we are taking a brief break from our Unique unit on ecosystems/biomes to indulge in some monstrous fun. Today we watched a couple of episodes of the Goolies on YouTube. Tomorrow we will start reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on audio book (courtesy of iTunes). Wednesday we will design our own monsters with both Boardmaker and as an art project. Thursday we are spending the day cooking/preparing the food and decorating the room for Friday (and having a birthday party for one of the kids while we're at it). And then there's FRIDAY!!

This year we are going to do the sensory story, do a couple of experiments (probably cornstarch/water goop and vinegar/baking soda explosions since most of my kids this year can see), dissect a pumpkin, play with the sensory toys I purchased last year, design our own costumes (complete with make up and hair dos), and jam to some appropriate Monster Mash music. If we have time we'll watch one of our Mad Scientist videos (Igor, Young Frankenstein, Little Shop of Horrors, Mad Monster Party, Flubber, The Nutty Professor, The Absent Minded Professor). As an aside, we had to cancel our pumpkin patch trip because of rain/mud so went to the video store to rent some fun, campy "B" "horror" movies. Can you believe the store didn't have anything? No Blob or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (or anything else that wanted to attack in weird and funny ways) to be found. We finally found an old copy of this obscure movie which we all about fell apart laughing at. The kids LOVED it and so did the adults. Made for a very fun rainy afternoon. I'm going to have to go hunt for more by these people (evil laugh--evil laugh--evil laugh--I sleep now --watch the movie, you'll get it).

Menu for this year is:

Sloppy Joe (poor Joe, I hope there's enough of him to go around)

Monster Fingers and Toes (green beans)

Wiggly Pumpkins (one of my paras has a jello mold shaped like a foot so we might use that)

Pumpkin Mouse (minus the tails of course)

(If you can't tell, I love Taste of Home recipes; most of what I cook at home and what we cook at school comes from these wonderful people; there are lots of classroom friendly recipes available so go check it out!)

The Plan for This Year (2009-10)

Mel commented to ask if I would post about how I plan my year and if possible include a long-range plan/curriculum overview. When you work in a specialized program like mine, long-range planning and curriculum are a huge deal. I don't have a set curriculum to follow, no teacher's guides or text books, no "curriculum map," or any of those other helpful things that tell other teachers what to teach when. My curriculum is highly differentiated based on the individual needs of the students and is focussed around their IEP goals as well as alternate assessment needs. That being said, I do have a framework for our activities. Of course, anyone who knows me at all knows I've never done anything the same way two years in a row :-) but I'll give it my best shot to try to explain my planning process.

Last year our curriculum pretty well centered around the topics in the News 2 You publications as well as holidays and special events (like the election) that came up. And every spring I plan a lengthy thematic unit that we spend several weeks on. Last year I did The Wizard of Oz. The two years prior to that we did Rainforests and Oceans. And then of course, as I posted, things went pthhhthhh and deflated after we finished with Oz and state assessments, although it perked back up when we did our We Shall Remain unit.

I used to try to be really "theme-y" and ranged from a new theme a week (what was I thinking?!!?) to a theme a month. I would research on early childhood websites for ideas, since they are all about themes, and "age up" for my students. I like themes, I mean REALLY like them. But, man, all that planning and work gets old after awhile. And I found out that we don't like to repeat the same themes/activities from year to year. I work with the same kids and (hopefully) staff for multiple years and doing the same things over and over (and over and over) just gets boring. We need more spice than that. So themes worked for me for about half the year, usually getting disrupted in the after-holiday doldrums or madness of state assessment season. Now don't get me wrong, there are some themes, like Halloween/pumpkins/fall, that we do every year (check out the Mad Science party we did last year and will probably do again this year--too fun!). And I've done enough themes that I've collected extensive materials for some of them so we try to find ways to use that too (for instance, we did the Unique summer curriculum on Oceans and used all the stuff from a previous oceans theme during ESY). And I'm one of those middle-of-the-night-brilliant-ideas people too, so sometimes "the plan" gets scrapped for one of those or for a new idea I've come across (for instance the brilliant set of activities Kate did around The Princess Bride).

This year I'm changing things up yet again (surprise! NOT!). I was able to purchase this year's Unique middle school curriculum so that will probably be the central driving force of our curriculum this year paired with the News 2 You topics. So far I like what I've seen, even though I have to do quite a bit of adapting (no news there; it's a good thing I like to do that and at least I don't have to come up with much content). Now, just a note that this is really only a small part of our daily/weekly curriculum as I also have kids going out into the community for shopping, leisure, and vocational experiences. And then there are the therapy activities, peer time, daily living skills training, and all the other things that are part of daily learning with these kids. And if by some chance Pete Wells comes up with a new literature unit like the Wizard of Oz, we'll probably add that in (are you reading Pete? I have requests if you're game!).

So my "general" daily schedule should look something like this:

7:40-8:00 Breakfast/peer time

8:00-8:30 Personal care/hygiene

8:30-9:00 Morning Meeting activities

9:00-10:30 Academic rotations (Unique/News 2 You, computer, IEP goals/state assessment)

10:30-11:00 PT activities, leisure skills

11:00-12:00 Lunch programs (cooking/prep, eating, clean up, personal care/hygiene)

12:00-12:30 Leisure skills (adult lunch breaks)

12:30-1:00 Chores (dishes, laundry, dusting, etc. around classroom)

1:00-2:00 Whole group activity (game, literature, art, cooking, science experiments, etc.)

2:00-2:45 Personal care/hygiene, home notes, leisure choices (as needed), departures

Interspersed into this schedule are community outings (job sites, shopping, swimming, etc.) and therapies. A couple kids go out to inclusion classes and we have peer buddies who come in for activities as well.

So that's it, kind of. My curriculum plan is a dynamic, constantly developing process. My advice for others trying to figure out how to plan their year is to keep it simple. Start with your state assessment requirements and add in IEP goals. Then look at what kinds of activities you can do to meet those needs. And it's often fun to develop yearly class traditions (pumpkin patch trip, Christmas shopping extravaganza, Mother's Day brunch, etc.). A unifying factor like Unique, News 2 You, Weekly Reader, etc. can also be very helpful in guiding content learning. Have fun planning your year!

More Mad Science

I just finished doing the powerpoint and script for Mad Monster Lab and it turned out too cute! Many thanks to my wonderful husband for showing me some of the tricks to powerpoint 07. I will post it here as soon as I figure out file sharing. It was unbelievably easy to do. Link to powerpoint.
Link to script (in Word) You'll need both documents. My kids are controlling the powerpoint using either the Smartboard or a jellybeamer. You could also add fun with messages on voice output devices (ooh, that's scary; look out!; what gonna happen now?; I'm scared; that's creepy; etc.). Have fun! Just a note: when I tried to download the powerpoint to another computer using 4Shared not all the sounds came through, which kind of ruins the effect. When I checked the presentation the sounds weren't even listed. If you can't get it to work correctly leave me a comment with contact info (or email me) and I'll send it to you directly. Try this link to the powerpoint to see if it works better.
Well, that didn't work either. The download still leaves out 4 of the sounds: storm, lab, shock, and Monster Mash. Works just fine on the original on my PC so not sure what's going on (I'm not that tech savvy, sorry). Here are the links to the missing sounds so you can add them yourself. I found the first 3 on http://www.findsounds.com/ and Monster Mash in http://www.ilovewavs.com/ :
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310396/25693eae/labclip.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310662/a3572493/Monster_Mash_Music.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310615/727227f7/ShocknScream.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310366/a2f12261/thunder2.html

Here are the words to Spooky Hooky:
Put your [body part] in
Put your [body part] out
Put your [body part] in and shake shake shake shake shake
Do the hooky spooky and
Wave your arms around
Then make a Halloween sound!

We use finger bones, foot bones, leg bone, arm bone, head bone, and the favorite rear end bone as well as whole skeleton.

I have a body parts PCS board already made for the Hokey Pokey that the kids take turns choosing from. Ahead of time they get to come to the computer and choose a spooky Halloween sound from my collection of wav files and record it on an AAC device (either tablet PC or step by step). Makes for lots of noisy fun as they don't usually wait for the end to activate. :-)
We also do "wave your arms" instead of turn around because our space is limited and turning around gets really challenging with all those wheelchairs!

I also have a copy of the song "What Do You Like About Halloween" by Sue Schnitzer (search her name on itunes; awesome stuff; I also like Oh the Bats, great use of a balloon and really just everything on her Halloween CD) that I just did a board for. I tested it at ROCKO this Saturday and it was a huge hit.

What do you like about Halloween?
What do you like about Halloween?
[child selects button that says "I like ___"]
[Child's name] likes [selection]
That's what we like about Halloween.

I put the board in Boardmaker/Speaking Dynamically on a tablet PC that we pass around to let the kids choose. My scanners can either step scan to their choice or use a non-tech mode to tell us what they want before we sing the verse. Now that I know the tune I can think of infinite ways to use the song: holidays, seasons, the weekend, working with our SLP, shopping, ....

Seriously....

This is one of the toughest school years I've had in a long long long long time. It just doesn't STOP!! First we had a very very short summer school session (4 hours a day for 16 days in June), and while that is better than nothing it KILLED my kids. We were still in recovery mode into November and had just started moving forward again when Christmas break hit followed by crazy inconsistencies in the schedule due to weather, inservices, and days off. BLEGH! Then for some reason this year my para staff has been extremely unstable. We started off the year with 5 students, 3 paras and myself, and we needed a 4th para. My favorite para of all time left us in the spring but was able to come back in September. All is well, right? WRONG!  Here's the run down: I started the year minus Para A but Para B and Para C returned and we inherited Para D. We were still one para short. Then Para A returned in September (fully staffed at this point) and we added another student (oops, need another para). Para C left the first of October (make that 2). Hired Para E to replace Para C. Para D's deficiencies became very obvious at this point and I started gathering the plethora of information required to terminate a para in our agency. Still one para short here. Then Para C was able to return after Thanksgiving (yay! fully staffed!) and ended up resigning again almost before she (re)started (boo! so done with that!). During the process of terminating Para D, she decided to walk out and not return two weeks before break (yay! the stress level in the room went waaaaay down even being so short handed) leaving us again short 2 paras. Hired Para F to replace Para D with a January start date (now short 1 para). Meanwhile Para B had a family emergency that required her to take a 4+ week leave in mid-January and to have to work half days for a few weeks after that (back to being short 2 paras). And Para F is in nursing school so has class two afternoons a week. I am now in the process of hiring Para F to re-replace Para C, but she also has college classes so is only available the second half of the day most days (which, incidentally, is when we really need the help; plus she's in school for music therapy so how awesome is that?). Confused much?

We gained two new students this year, for the first time in almost 5 years. One was expected (moved up from elementary school) and one was a surprise ("we just had a family move in to our district and one of their kids is one of 'your' kids; they'll be there this afternoon to enroll and they don't have time to meet with you to discuss their very complex daughter and we don't have the IEP yet and they want her to start tomorrow"). WHAT?!?!?! This was the day after I had taken custody of our new three-month-old son and was planning to work half days for a couple of weeks while integrating him into our family, loving on our then-17-month-old daughter, and dealing with the very very needy three-year-old living with us at the time. I was only at school that day because ALL my IEPs were scheduled for September and I needed to do paperwork and my home computer was dead. So ended up waiting all day for the family to show, baby in tow. Thanks to a snafu from the sending district they didn't show for 3 more weeks. We DID get the intake meeting (yay) but I lost out on hiring a potentially awesome para who was also an LPN who could have handled all the (extensive) medical issues arising in my program (boo!).

The months of August and September were entirely blown with IEP meetings, court hearings (I had three, one of the paras had one for her child), numerous doctor appointments and other planned absences, and chronic short-staffedness. I don't think the kids noticed, however, as they were all still struggling with summer break recovery. I have had times before where I felt like we were barely treading water, but we were in full out drowning mode until December. And now we are into state assessment season, which requires more of my time to do paperwork than to work with students. And it seems the more paras I hire the more staff absences we have. UGH!! And I'm not even going to go into the nightmare dealing with the transportation departments of five different districts has been (I know you can't please all of the people all of the time, but COME ON! Give me a break already!). Or the extreme challenge of dealing with a difficult team member once a week who is constantly finding fault with something we do (or don't do). Certainly hasn't made it easier to fight my very strong desire to just stay home with my babies (oh, if only I could afford to do that and could bear to leave "my" kids at school and the program I've worked so hard to develop). To say I've been a bit unmotivated to be innovative and creative is putting it lightly. Thus the reason for no blogs since, what? June? July? I never really understood "burn out" before. And no, I don't think I'm suffering from that malady, but I can certainly see where it comes from. I've been doing this for 16 years, year-round, with almost no extensive breaks but I still love my job (mostly). God called me to this work and thus far I've had it fairly easy. He's putting me to the test right now and I just need to have the patience and fortitude to work it through (breathe in, breathe out).

It hasn't been entirely awful, though, and we have had quite a bit of fun along with the headaches. We did a literature study on Nim's Island which was very enjoyable and are now deep into learning about pirates while reading Fish (great book with lots and lots of potential for extensive lessons in all subject areas). We did another Mad Science party. We found some fun new paras to liven the place up. We had a penguin party. Several of the kids are succeeding with new communication systems (when they choose to talk to us anyway) and learning programs. We are excited to be getting expanded digs in the forseeable future (right now we feel rather like sardines and I'm slated to get two more students; they'd like for me to have them now but I just don't have space for them). Now that "grouchy para" has left we spend more time laughing than complaining/grousing/moping/being miserable. It's mid-February and while we've only touched the tip of the state assessment iceberg, that's also just a few weeks until spring break and shortly after that the end of regular school (I have no idea if we will even have summer school, how long it will be, or where, but we'll cross that bridge after we hurdle state assessments). We are excited to be doing a pirate party when we finish our current literature study. As far as state assessments, my high schoolers are almost to the point of NEVER HAVING TO TAKE THEM AGAIN! They will all have two to do next year then they are DONE DONE DONE!! So that work load will go down tremendously, just in time for all the changes I know 2014 will bring. My oldest student (homebound) is graduating this spring so we'll have some fun planning a celebration for him too.

I'm not going to promise to blog more. Life is just too overwhelming right now for me to make any more commitments. But I'll try to drop a line now and then. I hope some of you who used to follow me are still out there somewhere. Those rare comments really mean a lot (except for you spammers; you are just a bunch of bummers getting me all excited about someone liking my blog then turning out to be junk and can stay away!).

Our Unique Adventure--October 09

(Wow! Is it time to plan October already?!?!?!?)

As I'm sure I've stated before, we are using the middle school level of the Unique curriculum this year. I am just finishing up the May unit on Sounds, which took us from mid-August to the end of September. There was so much for us to learn that we won't be able to finish it before needing to move on. Sorry, Alexander Graham Bell, guess we'll have to try learning about you later. And we really don't need to know how to protect our ears and hearing, do we?

So now I'm on to planning for the October unit (notice we skipped September's unit which was mainly about Abraham Lincoln as well as our freedoms as U.S. citizens; this was a team decision as my staff are really excited about the October unit; in addition our state assessment emphasis this year is on science; plus silly me thought we'd get through the sounds unit in August, only to learn that each chapter takes us at least a week). This one, at least for middle school, is about the plants and animals around us and focuses on biomes, specifically the 5 primary biomes of the United States/North America (tundra, deciduous forest, taiga, grasslands, and deserts). This looks like a really fun unit. I haven't made it all the way through the provided curriculum materials yet but have lots of ideas for things we will do. I'll add more to this post as we come up with them. I'm planning on this taking all of October and probably most of November too (6 chapters plus an introductory set of lessons). There is a lot to learn with this unit. I wish the overview section was a little more detailed about what future units will cover so I know how to pick and choose and schedule. In addition to watching my blog, keep an eye on the blogs in my Blog Roll as a number of those folks also use Unique and will be posting their ideas too.

First of all, we will be learning to differentiate between living and non-living things. I just posted an activity on Adapted Learning to that effect (a simple book; search on living vs non-living). We will also do sorting activities using magazine pictures and photo cards which I just happen to have already. I may throw in a quick lesson on things found in nature vs. man-made things too. And we'll do some work on the seasons, especially as we're in the middle of a seasonal change here in Kansas. I love that the easy reader story is about a migrating robin as many of the birds in our area are starting the annual migrations.

Added 10/4/09: We had fun at the nature center checking out living and nonliving things. The museum actually encompasses several different biomes so that was neat too. And we explored a grasshopper we caught and released as well as brought back a few plant and seed samples. They are going into our sensory bin for exploration next week along with a (very dead) locust we found outside the school on our way in.

For seasons we did a fun art project based on the book A Tree for All Seasons. The kids drew four trees (we did the trunks then supported the kids to hold the marker and draw the branches); we left the winter tree bare, lightly balloon stamped light green on the spring tree, balloon stamped darker green on the summer treee, and chose fall leaf colors to balloon stamp on the autumn tree. The kids really liked doing this.

The first chapter has a companion activity about labeling a map with biomes, plants, and animals. We are adapting by using a black-and-white outline map of the US. We will trace on the boundaries for the different biomes. Then the kids will use tactile materials to fill in the boundaries (glitter or cotton for tundra; raffia or shredded paper for grasslands; fall leaf confetti for forests; sand or yellow glitter for desert; mini stamp of pine tree for taiga). We'll also find a way to make our state (Kansas) stand out (maybe outline with dimensional paint?) so the kids can start to recognize that too (we've worked on that before). We'll mount the map on a big piece of construction paper and then have the kids match colors to add the pictures of the biomes, plants, and animals in the right places. We'll use step-by-steps to request materials, switch adapted scissors for cutting, and have lots of tactile fun with the glue and materials.

Added 10/27/09: Support videos for the Seasons topic: Wintermood on YouTube has some beautiful videos based on Vivaldi's Four Seasons (Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall). My kids' favorite is Autumn. Wintermood has a number of lovely videos using a variety of classical and instrumental music. We've been projecting it onto the wall over our swing/sensory area with the music through the surround sound for a fun and relaxing sensory experience. It shows well on an IWB too. For those who can't access YouTube at school, try using Media Converter or Zamzar to convert to .wmv or whatever format works best for you. YouTube also had a number of decent videos related to ecosystems, biomes, forests, etc. available. Many of these were linked from SchoolTube and TeacherTube so try those sites as well.

We will also be taking a few field trips related to biomes. The science center in Wichita has a whole section that is essentially about the Kansas biome/s, including an area where you can explore making rivers (complementing one of the provided supplemental activities). There is also the zoo, the nature center, and the pumpkin patch. If I can find a nearby orchard that has apples on the trees (seems there was a problem with the apple trees around here this spring), we might also go apple picking and do a related cooking project.

One of the companion activities is to make a desert plant terrarium. The website referenced by the curriculum also describes how to make a couple of other types of terrariums. I think we'll take the kids to a nearby plant shop that sells really cool plants cheaply and specializes in terrarium plants and try to make a couple of different biomes. Not sure if we can pull off the tundra, but I'm sure we can do desert, deciduous forest (OK, not the trees but the kids should ge the point), grasslands, and maybe taiga. And we might get adventurous and try some water plants too.

The unit also suggests making dioramas. This is right up our alley since it involves lots and lots of choices and we can make it tactile and multi-dimensional. And 5 students means they can each make a different one (hopefully they each LIKE either all different ones or more than one so we won't have overlap).

If we have time we'll do reports on our favorite animals and/or biomes.

I need to go hunting for various smallish manipulatives related to the plants and animals of the biomes we'll be studying to use as math manipulatives, etc. And hopefully we can score some old nature magazines to cut out pictures in order to do same/different, more/less, and sorting.

We'll be using simple and high use words from the reading material as sight words and phomemic awareness prompts to build our vocabularies and work on reading skills.

And there are all the sensory things you can do related to the biomes: cold (I'm thinking about getting some of that "insta snow" stuff; expensive but really neat), water, grass, rocks, dirt, bark, leaves, sand, cacti (not too spiky), etc. And we can certainly tie in weather concepts (yay as that's on our science assessment this year).

Adding all of that to our second annual Mad Scientist Party (check here and here for what we did last year), a birthday party, some inconvenient days off, IEPs, Thanksgiving, and whatever else crops up and it's going to be a B U S Y fall. Just the way I like it.