Episode 9: 3 Indoor Orientation and Mobility Lesson Plans to Celebrate the Holidays
It’s the time of the year again and I don’t know about you, but I am already feeling the holiday breeze in the air! As much as we want to keep our students exploring and learning outdoors, the cold may bother them at some point. So, you might want to start looking at things to do inside, because crossing the streets outside in the cold may be effective, but it’s not very fun.
In this episode, I am going to share some activities that you can do with your students that don’t require being outside. They are all holiday activities that you can do to stretch out that weird time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here we go.
Doing scavenger hunt within a store
One of the ways to keep this really fun for my students is taking them to a store combined with scavenger hunt. You might want to start with getting a store map, this way you can already have a lot of conversations about going into a store and soliciting assistance.
You want your students to find items that motivate them. Your students can use the monocular inside or they can solicit assistance. If they want to independently shop for those items, they can definitely do so.
The key here is that you want to include the travelling to the store within your curriculum. Navigating the store using a map, soliciting assistance, buying things and if possible budgeting, using monoculars for item search if they have one, will definitely make the lesson great and fun regardless of your students’ level.
2. Making Hot Cocoa
The next idea is the classic hot cocoa lesson. Have you ever taken your student to get or make hot cocoa? It’s super fun when it’s cozy and cold outside. We’ll take this idea up a notch by making the drink a bit extra.
Most of us, if not all, are guilty of how we love ordering a customised drink from Starbucks because we get to add flavour or a little something of this and that, depending on how we want our caffeine fix to taste like. We also love their specialty drinks, like the Vanilla Frappuccinos. So, the idea here is choosing a drink and replicating it.
You’ll want to locate recipes online that way assistive technology skills is involved. It’s a good chance to also get them experience the skill of planning a route as you walk them to the address to the nearby store to buy the ingredients. The interesting part of this lesson is, since the ingredients are not of the regular cocoa drink, there’s a big chance that it will be your student’s first time to look for a certain item because it’s new to them. If you don’t call that challenging then I don’t know what is.
and the last holiday activity on my list, which happened to be my favorite is..
3. Throwing a Party
I think it’s the perfect time to start planning for a party! I had no idea how tough it was for my students because it’s something that you and I probably do all the time. You’ll want them to use a calendar to plan and set a date for a soirée. It’s not a party without guests, so it’s a good way to encourage your students to make email invitations or go to the post office to send out invitation cards. After invitations, they can help you decide what to serve in the party and then eventually, do the shopping.
This is a way to get them engaged with travelling, engaged with planning and engaged in shopping in real world applications. There’s a lot in planning a party to keep your students busy this holiday season.
So, those are my ideas on how you and your students can take advantage of the coming holidays.