Disability Awareness Week Volunteers

We will need two volunteers to act as puppeteers. They will need to hold the puppets and read from the script (provided) with two-three puppet characters who have different disabilities. It is an easy and fun job!

The volunteers will be at one of the rotations. The rotations include (1) a station where the kids will learn about communication boards and will have individual communication boards to use to make phrases (2) The kids will get to touch and try out prosthetic legs and arms for different uses and also animal prosthetics. (3) The kids will get to try out wheelchairs and handcycles and ride them in the multipurpose room or outside hallway.

We will be reading the book We Are All Alike, We Are All Different, then playing a game where we discuss how we are all alike (we all have hair) and how we are different (some of us have blond hair, black hair, brown hair or red hair). The volunteers will stand in separate corners of the room holding a sign with a color of hair, etc. for each section of the game. The kids will then be making puppets with different disabilities and the parents will assist with stapling popsicle sticks to form puppets.

We will be discussing how each of our brains work differently, and having rotations to do exercises. Station One - volunteer will be working on demonstrating visual processing and dyslexia exercises. Station Two - Volunteer will be working with students to show how some of us get distracted by processing lots of stimuli and some of us work better with noise or fidgets. Station three will examine different learning styles and how we all have strengths in different areas (visual, auditory or kinesthetic). EOTL staff will be running each session and volunteers will receive clear training and language to use at their station.

The students will be seeing a presentation and then be making their own puppets and doing an activity on how we can all play together.

We will be showing the kids tools that people with vision and hearing disabilities use in their everyday life. There are three stations that parents will oversee. (1) Station one will be using a Perkins Brailler, and each student will get a turn writing their initials in braille. They will have handouts with braille code on them and on the reverse side they will be able to do riddles in braille while waiting for their turn. (2) The second station will discuss sign language as an actual language like Spanish or English. The parent will teach the kids a simple phrase in sign “Hello, my name is…” (which EOTL will teach them) and then they can use handouts to try and learn their names in sign. (3) We have a trunk full of games, books, and equipment that blind people may use, and goggles that have been modified to simulate blindness. The kids will get to touch and try all of these items and the parent volunteer will show them how each works.