Last week I shared about the need for a preschool for the blind here in Hyderabad and our dream to make that a reality. If you missed it, you can read that story here: Preschool for the Blind: The Dream.
We are working on getting everything ready to open a school building and take children from the community. We are working on making brochures to spread the word to families in need of our services, have met with the finance department and are working on a budget, are figuring out the legal side of things, are looking into some potential buildings, and even have our logo!
Until our actual school is up and running though, we have started running the school out of our home from 10-12 every morning with just SCH children. We are using this to try out ideas and make a plan for what we want our school to look like when it opens. We currently have 8 students: Jasmine, Cedar, Dinah, Chloe, Charlotte, and Brianna from our home, and Eden and Katherine from one of the other SCH homes.
Each week we focus on a different theme. The first week was animals, then shapes, numbers, and this week is letters. We are still tweaking things and figuring out what works best but here is what a normal day of preschool looks like thus far:
1) Circle Time
To start things off, we gather all the kids in a big circle in our living room. We sing our welcome/circle song, go around the circle saying everyone's names and practicing waving and saying hi, read a book together, sing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," find each of our body parts, count to 10, and then sing another song or two related to our theme for the week.
2) Skills
Next we work on some individual goals we've set for each of the kids. Jasmine, Cedar, and Chloe practice walking to the bathroom using their guide canes, work on undressing themselves, splash around in the water for a few minutes, and then work on putting their clothes on again and walking back out into the living room. Charlotte crawls to the bathroom to work on potty training. Dinah works on color sorting as she is our only student with some vision. Brianna practices standing and walking with support. Eden and Katherine work on sitting independently.
3) Academics
After skill time we all meet back up again for some sort of academic or fine motor activity related to our theme of the week. Here are some of our favorites so far:
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4) PT/Exercise
Next it is time to get the kids up and moving! Some days we play games like soccer or duck, duck, goose, some days we walk up and down the stairs to lead to our activity, and some days this section kind of overlaps with either academics or our activity for the day. The kids each participate however they can at the level they are at. Here are some highlights:
Huge milestone! During preschool last week, Brianna took her first assisted steps! Go, Brianna!
5) Activities
Following the PT/Exercise portion comes our activity for the day. We typically try to incorporate something sensory into this section. Tuesday - Thursday we do a number of different activities and then we also have Music Mondays where the kids dance and play different instruments, and Food Fridays where we try a new food each week to help our kids begin to overcome some of their resistance to new foods. Some of our favorite activities we've done so far include:
6) Goodbye song
We close our day of preschool with all gathering back in a circle and singing our goodbye song together. All the kids practice waving goodbye to each other and saying, "bye-bye!"
We are so excited about our school! Every day I wake up looking forward to preschool time. It has become my favorite part of the day.
If you would like to hear more about our school, ways you can get involved, and updates on needs and prayer requests, comment here or send me a message to be added to our Anjali School for the Blind mailing list (if you have already asked to be added you do not need to do so again). Once a month Nikki will be writing an update that we will send to all of you who are interested. I will be sending out our March update tomorrow so let me know quickly if you don't want to miss it!
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