After School 'Spring Event' for Special Education

Each month I plan an after school event for our students with special needs to hangout with their general education peers. This month I had the students vote (using a google form) between a spring event with crafts and snacks or an open gym event. The spring event won by a landslide!!

Some of you might have noticed that the day before the event I still didn't know exactly what we were going to do. What can I say? I work best under pressure!

After a little bit of freaking out and brainstorming with some of my classroom aides, we came up with the idea of making kites. I wanted to give the kids some freedom in what they wanted to make, so I came up with an easy paper bag kite or a more challenging tissue paper kite for them to choose from.

Craft/Activity: Kite making and decorating was a blast and then as a bonus, it was a great day to test out our kites with the crazy wind we had!

Me checking out some of the kites. 

It was easier for many of the students to just take their kites and run with them, but I think this one actually would have flown like a real one too.

And here's one of the paper bag kites. Super easy and very cool looking too.

Games: We played some games to get everyone moving around and getting to know some new friends. The first is a simple 4 corners game. I printed four different spring themed pictures (butterfly, rainbow, flowers, and kites) and taped them in the corners of the room. Students then choose a corner and someone (who is not looking at the corners) chooses one of the pictures to be out. Then, everyone who was at that corner is out. Everyone else can switch corners in between calls and the last one standing wins! Somehow, both times we played, the same person won. She'll have to share her secret with us sometime. :)

Then we also played a fishing game with my magnetic fishing pole and strips of paper that I attached to paper clips as activities the kids had to complete. They said things like "sing a song", "give everyone a high five", "hop like a bunny", and others.

Snacks: Everyone knows a party isn't a party without snacks! These are both snacks that I had either seen or done variations before, and as a bonus, they are healthy too.

Can you tell what this is supposed to be? Hopefully you were thinking a butterfly! I think it's pretty obvious, but it's celery with peanut butter, pretzels, and then sixlets for eyes. I was surprised at how much the kids loved this snack. One student was talking about donuts the whole time, so I thought for sure he would be disappointed with this healthy option, but nope, he scarfed it down and then said it was even better than donuts. WHAT?! Another student said "gross, no [celery] sticks" and then ended up eating 4 straight celery sticks! Ha. My students are full of surprises.

We also had some fruit kabobs - "caterpillars" if we wanted to go with the butterfly theme...and it was simply marshmallows (colored fruit flavored marshmallows definitely necessary) and grapes. 

It was nice to have two different options for snack so that kids could choose which one they wanted. Also, it was beneficial that we weren't all crowding around trying to make the same thing at the same time.

For a two hour event, it sure went by fast! I'm so happy with how much fun the kids had together.