One of our teachers recently took a trip to Peru and visited Machu Picchu—–how cool is that! Her trip inspired us to learn a little about the country of Peru! This theme also compliments the Unique Curriculum unit our students are working on this month. Our sensory groups explored boxes related to different facts about the country. The fine motor groups made art projects using symbols of Peru and the language group made a tasty Peruvian treat.
Machu Picchu is located in the Andes mountain range in Peru. Our students used Floam to make their own version of the mountains. We included 4 llamas a symbol of the country and domesticated by ancient Peruvians. Since we didn’t have any small llama figures, we just printed out some clip art pictures and laminated them—-it worked pretty well!
Copper mining is a major industry in Peru. Our copper colored kinetic sand is such a fabulous tactile experience for the students. There was a cookie cutter letter P but watching it run through fingers is always the preferred way to explore this fabulous stuff!
Potatoes originally came from Peru—–NOT Ireland 🙂 Letter P’s and a map of Peru could be found in this box of potato flakes. Soft and slightly crunchy, an interesting texture that the students really loved!
Jaguars are another animal that can be found in the rainforests of Peru. There were 2 plush jaguars to find hidden in the colorful rainforest flowers. Some of the students loved the jaguars but others had a blast grabbing handfuls of petals and watching them drift down. A very eye catching box!
Much of the Amazonian rainforest is located in Peru. Ms. Zenia, our fabulous OT intern, made this wonderful rainforest umbrella for us. Along with the sounds of the rainforest recorded on a voice output device, it was almost like being there!
We found out that you can see Humboldt penguins in Peru so we put some in our water play this week. Ok, so perhaps our birds are more of the Madagascar cartoon variety but sometimes you have you use what you have on hand 🙂
The world’s finest cotton comes from Peru so Bath and BodyWorks cotton scent was the choice this week. It was a nice aroma that our students really seemed to like. This part of our group really encourages students to use communication words, symbols, and gestures.
Associate information or wants and needs with referent object, gestures/signs, pictures, symbols, or words is a language access point.
FINE MOTOR GROUP
On Tuesday our students made some Peruvian flags.
Recognize objects with two-dimensional shapes is a math access point.
After gluing the smaller RED rectangles onto a white piece of paper, they added the coat of arms to the middle. To find the coat of arms we enlarged one we cut out from a printable flag page we found using Google—–what would we do without Google! 🙂
On Wednesday the students made some llamas using this: llama-template
Recognize a change in an object is a science access point.
VERY realistic lol—-we are keeping our day jobs 🙂
After the umbrella, we made a Peruvian dish. This week we made Peruvian quinoa and cauliflower pilaf. Here is the recipe that we used, which was found on the website perudelights.com: lets-make-peruvian-quinoa-and-cauliflower-pilaf We did have to modify the amounts of each ingredient since we did not want to make a huge portion.
When it came time to put in some lemon juice, each of the students got to try a little bit. We talked about how it tasted SOUR. Surprisingly, a few of our students went back for a second, and sometimes a third, taste!
Yay for Peru!
Hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about Peru. Join us again next week for more fun and learning—–Group by Group!