With two days left of ESY, I figure it's about time to share some of my ESY adventures. We have ESY M-Th during the month of June. It is a total of 16, 5 hour teaching days. It goes by rather quickly and I try to make it fun, while still full of structure and IEP goal work. I never know what students I'll have until right before ESY begins. This year I have 4-6th grade students, all on the autism spectrum. Fortunately, I know all of these students (this isn't always the case), as they all attend the school where I teach and I have either had them in my class or have done music therapy with them. I had 7 on my roster, but have only had 5 students attending.
I typically use mostly summer themed activities and tasks during ESY. I have a growing collection of summer resources that I bring to ESY. This definitely helps when packing and planning for ESY. I also typically plan one "fun" activity each day of ESY. These activities include cooking, sensory play and crafts.
This past week we made s'mores, s'mores trail mix and sampled s'mores oreos. The students overwhelmingly chose the oreos as the favorite version of s'mores. I prefer the good old fashioned version.
We also made ice cream dough, which is a personal favorite of mine. It's quick and easy and always a hit. The basic recipe for ice cream dough is 1 1/2 cup cornstarch and 3/4 hair conditioner. I try to buy a vanilla or fruity scented conditioner so it smells more like ice cream. You can also add vanilla, cocoa powder or food coloring to make a specific flavor. Earlier in ESY we made rainbow rice, which we used as sprinkles for our ice cream play.
Another favorite activity was goldfish sorting and graphing. The students loved sampling the different goldfish flavors and I loved all the sorting, counting and graphing going on. If you are interested in this activity, you can get it free by clicking the image.
Enjoy!
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