MAGIC BOX

Magic Box is an activity to work with pupils with multy sensory impairments.

With the Magic Box we want to get contact by teasing the different senses. Materials are offered to the children. Every child gets enough time to explore the objects, to follow with the eyes, to listen, to feel, to manipulate, to smell even try to taste. An adult will always be guiding the child when it is exploring the materials and try to teas for a reaction of the child, interaction and communication.

It is very difficult to have contact with those children. They have none or minimal developed imitations skills. They don’t understand symbols. The children don’t have enough impression of the meaning and function of the objects. The connection between a verbal word and the object/activity/person is not yet achieved. Communication happens to be most of the time by body language, grimes, behavior and sounds of desires or non desires. Many children have a physical dysfunction and they depend on an adult for changing positions, material investigation, or moving to another place. Other children are able to make moves but not efficiently. Their interest in materials and their environment is short. Many children have other sensory impairments. A few children are bad hearing or blind or less visible, a few of the children are deaf or less hearing.

What we want to reach?

From birth there is an interaction between the child and the people nearby. All of the senses will participate on building up a confidential bond between his parents/nurses and is a way to get stronger. In the relationship between parent/child, the child learns, on a very young age, how to communicate in a verbal way. By body language, grimes, looking, sounds, vocalization comes the child in a dialog with his parents and nurse’s.

With children with a multiple mental and physical disability we hope to stimulate this non-verbal dialog. We try to develop and increase the most basic reactions such as:

°increase the awareness of other people

°increase the impressions of the grimes and eye contact

°improve the auditive attention and a better listening attitude

°increase the awareness of material

°reactions on all kind of visual signs

°reacting when having fun or sadness

°expressing likes and dislikes

°reacting when somebody is calling them

°reacting on its own name

°asking for attention by watching or “jebbertalk”

°sharing attention

°sharing pleasure

How this activity is carried out

In every session we use the same way of movements. We always start and end the activity with waving a heavy colored table sheet on the same song we use every time. Then we put the materials on a magic way on the table and offer them to the children.

The most interesting materials are:

°big and visual-attractive, using nice coloring objects

°auditive impressing

°stimulating multiple impulses

Organization and structure

By putting the children in half a circle, they can follow the activity from start to end and they are more beware of being in a group. By putting the children in this position they can see the reaction of other children what can result in a motivated action and make a possible imitation of the reaction. For children who are physical more active and chaotic, it is better to sit around the table for a more quite feeling.

Bringing structure in to your activity means security, knowing what will happen and offering a perspective to the child. It is also very important that every session follows the same patron; the same start and ending, a strict order of materials, the same positions, the same way of offering objects and same duration.

Importance of repetition

By repeating structural activities, they become predictable and confidential. Because every impulse is repeated several times and the object rotates in the group, the child gets more time to experience the impulses. The child will recognize the objects and after a while they start to anticipate on what is going to happen. The participation of the child will increase. By repeating, the child has the possibility to participate in a more (inter)active way.

The children show many times little subtle signs of recognition, anticipation, pleasure...

By observing and remembering that reactions on an impulse may be delayed, it is very important that even the small reactions or signals are not overlooked.

By repeating the activity several times, the child knows what’s going to happen next. Because of that, the child will take initiative more easily. Also by quitting the activity, you offer a lot of opportunities for interaction and communication.

MAGIC BOX IN OUR SCHOOL

In our school we have done almost three different “Magic Boxes” since most of our pupils can take advantage of this activity.

We done, let's say regular “Magic Boxes” and thematic ones. The thematic “Magic Boxes” are equipped with different stimulus related with a main topic. For example during Carnival festivity we worked with different funny materials to make our learners aware of what the Carnival is. So we did what we call the “Carnival Magic Box”.

These boxes can be used in the classrooms or into the sensory room as well. We always follow the guidelines seen in the Heemschool and explained at the beginning of this file. Here you can see some photos of our sensory “Magic Boxes”. Our pupils participate actively with this funny activity.

MAGIC BOX IN OUR SCHOOL

We are achieving most of the objectives of the activity with those who have multiple disabilities and difficulties to relate with their environment. Our learners really love the “Magic Box” activities.