Elementary School Gets New Life Skills Lab
Anderson Elementary School has a new life skills lab where students can learn to do everyday tasks.
Special education teacher Heather Nalley started working last year toward the new lab, which is located next door to her classroom. Rather than burden the school district with a request for funding, she secured donations for her project.
She called Lowes in Neosho to see if it would donate a stove, but what ended up happening took the project much farther. Lowes has a program called Lowes Heroes in which it donates materials, appliances and employee labor to good causes. The employees painted, built cabinets and countertops
and installed a refrigerator, stove, washer and dryer.
Other items in the room came from donations via the Donors Choose project, an online crowdfunding site where anyone can donate to a cause.
This project made possible a kitchen island, coffee bar for use for teacher meetings, kitchen chairs, utensils and pans, a Kitchenaid mixer and more.
A man at Nalley’s church built two tables for the room, one a counter-height table and one a long dining room style table.
In addition to the kitchen area, the room has a sensory area. Nalley said, if a child is having trouble or melting down, it is a good place to decompress and have some quiet time. There is a swing that was formerly in the classroom. Students love it, she said. The area also has gel tiles on the floor that students like to step on, sensory books that have different textures, Lego tiles on the wall, bubble tubes that light up, a balance board and a small trampoline.
The kitchen area is for teaching life skills to Nalley’s students, who are special needs students in second through fifth grades. Life skills are important for them, including learning to wash and dry a load of laundry and make simple foods, such as macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, toast and eggs. The high school has a life skills lab, but Nalley wanted to expose the students to life skills earlier, especially so they could make food safely if they get hungry.
Before they had the life skills lab, Nalley was making cookies with her students, and her paraprofessional brought a Kitchenaid Mixer from home. They had to go from the classroom to another room where there was an oven and back to check on the cookies. Nalley thought it would be nice to have their own space to work in. She hopes to have the wall opened up that is between the lab and her classroom. The lab is also open to the entire school, she added. One teacher is going to use the lab to teach her students about fractions through cooking.
Anderson Elementary principal Sarah Messley said, “I’m very excited about being able to offer this opportunity to the students of Anderson Elementary. We want to provide not only academics but those realworld activities that prepare you for life. We’re thankful that we have such a nice facility to be able to do that.”