The After-School Program is designed to provide stimulating interactive learning activities for elementary age children with disabilities and their typically developing siblings and peers in a safe after school setting. The program runs from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm. Meet the staff.
The inclusive After-School program goals are to offer children with mental, physical and social delays and their typical peers opportunities to engage in meaningful creative learning activities in a structured non-stressful environment.
Weekly, children from local elementary schools will participate in a variety of activities in small groups with adult leaders. Every child will be checked in at arrival and offered snack and down time until arrival of all participants.
Transportation
Children with disabilities are eligible for transportation to SCEIC’s facility by the Brevard Public School Bus System if they are in the 2 mile radius feeder zone of SCEIC. Coordination for special needs transportation is set up between the parent and their elementary school’s transportation coordinator.
Activities scheduled weekly will include:
Handwriting without Tears, a nationally recognized program that gently uses fine motor activities to encourage proper finger placement, muscle control and spatial awareness of lettering. Certified teachers along with the groups’ adult leader will provide assistance in maintaining participation and completion of worksheets. Take home completed sheets will help parents generate discussion topics to engage their child on what they did that day.
Hippo Therapy Horse Back Riding: Weekly, children have an opportunity to go horseback riding with a professional occupational therapist and a team of volunteers. Horses trained to allow children the maximum therapeutic gain from movement including sensory integration and proprioceptive input are a few of the benefits they will receive during their
adventure. Children are bussed with their adult group leaders to the riding stables off campus and return by 5:45pm for pick up at SCEIC. Parents are required to sign a waiver to participate and to be transported to/from the activity. Shorts or long pants and closed toed shoes are required to participate.
Science and Technology Center is a project based daily activity that focuses on environmental awareness. Fun projects involve recycling everyday materials you can reuse on a daily basis. Ecological awareness is at the heart of this program; saving the planet, reducing pollution, understanding how nature works, how to re-use materials that we throw away to make new products. A trip to the Recycle Center will be scheduled. Every child’s family will be asked to help the participant to collect a list of everyday materials that most everyone throws away to bring in and recycle into a useful product that will be displayed and then sent home to use.
Pottery
/Art Class is held twice a week on campus at SCEIC by a local artist. Sensory input, fine motor muscle use, working with the clay, three dimensional creative thinking, and assemblage of artwork in a creative play environment are just some of the activities. Activities allow children opportunities to build their auditory and visual abilities, follow direction, and develop language and social skills. This activity helps increase self-esteem through the accomplishment of a finished end product that can be displayed. Each child will make a piece of pottery that will be glazed and fired in a kiln for display at the school and then for home.
Imaginary Play/Social Growth Time: Throughout the week, all children will have the opportunity to exercise their imagination and just play with materials that will help them explore themselves and their creative sides. With the intense push for academics in their regular school day, this age group is eager for experiences that allow their imagination to run and explore playing with each other. Puppetry centers will enhance language usage, and social / emotional regulation.
Dance/Dramatics will be a quarterly class so the children have consecutive weeks to learn a routine that will climax at the end of three months with a recital. Dance is seen as an important social skill for most young people and having a way to project voices to an audience is a powerful motivator for speech. Using video cameras, we will be able to monitor children’s language, confidence and social skills progress over their practice periods. A projector system will also be used in this program so the children have an opportunity to see themselves perform.
Food Fun – Run by the staff of “The Chart House” restaurant, this weekly program introduces the children to a variety of different foods, tastes, textures and consistencies. Fun activities of combining fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts and creating meals through games encourages children to experiment and try new foods.
Technology/Tutoring Center: As part of the daily routine of the program, tuturing and homework time is scheduled and children work in small groups facilitated by adults. Our afterschool tutoring component will use the Kurzwell product to aid students with visual discrimination and dyslexic tendencies in their reading skills acquisition. Laptop computers will be used to support this new system.
“Play Ball” – The basis of this program is to aid students with gross motor development which provides the basis of all other forms of development, including intellectual and perceptual development. Using sports as a means, a professional instructor will assist students with an opportunity to develop their skills in a structured environment whereby children in different age groups are exposed to a variety of sport and movement skills, with the focus on small groups in order to provide special attention to each individual.
