Student Led Projects

There are twenty three classrooms in our program grouped into four different levels.  Most of our classrooms/levels have student led projects they have started to help earn money to pay for activities for the kids. Other classrooms have projects that don't generate income but help with things we need done for the program like filling our classroom water jugs, maintaining the vans, and keeping our campus clean. Here are some of the income generating projects we have:


A gardening service
A house cleaning service
Jewelry making
Recycling
Car washing
Baking
Hair Clips

My classroom, for the last 3 years, has provided a food delivery service for students and staff in our program.  Currently we are doing this every other Friday.  The fee we charge is usually around one dollar per order (not item).  We deliver pizza, burgers, Mexican food, sandwiches etc.  Monday mornings we start by putting up flyers around campus announcing what restaurant we will be serving that week (I also send out an email to each teacher with the restaurant flyer attached).  I don't offer every item on a restaurants menu so we can keep it simple for the kids. Thursdays we pass flyers out to students as they are leaving school.  

Friday mornings from 8:00 to 9:30 my kids, with help from staff, collect all of the orders and money. We then fax or email the order in to the restaurant.  Before lunch some of the students go with my aides to pick up the food while the rest of us prepare for it's arrival.  Once the food comes we separate the food by classroom, put each classrooms orders into crates, and add any chips or sodas that have been ordered (we purchase these separately). The kids then deliver the food to each classroom.  We have gotten so good at this we can do it in about 15 minutes. The kids love doing this, it gets crazy and everyone is yelling out orders, but they really get a sense of accomplishment when they are done.  Costco pizza is one of the favorites. We have sold over 75 orders, up to 200 slices, in one day!  

Do any of your programs run student led projects?  I would love to hear of other money making ventures students are participating in!

Restaurant Etiquette

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Life-Skills-Restaurant-Etiquette

Here is another life skills worksheet.  I would love to end this lesson with an actual trip to a restaurant.  But, before I do that, I think it would be fun to turn my classroom into a "restaurant", me and my aides can dress as waiters, have the students order from the lunch menu, and serve them as if we were at a restaurant.  Let's see if they remember what they learned!

Entertaining Guests

We do a few activities on entertaining throughout the year.   In this activity we are pretending we are having company come to our home for lunch.  The students have to make a grocery list by using the recipe cards attached.  Go to the grocery store with your list and find the items you have listed.  Add your totals when you get back to class.  Would even be fun, financing available, to put the students into groups of 5 and let them  buy the ingredients and create the meal.  We do another activity similar to this, where the students create their own menu for a pretend dinner party.  We go over all the things that would make a meal from drinks, salad, soups, main dishes and desserts.  They cut pictures from the abundance of food magazines we have and paste their menu to paper.  The menus range from mac and cheese with Hot Pockets to prime rib and brussel sprouts!  It is a lot of fun!

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8NVsf6Y1KIvY3NHOTR1a1lTeWVBdlhJYlNwOU9aQQ/edit
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8NVsf6Y1KIvVVl2ZnhELUJSemFPckpZejFTQnlLZw/edit

Grocery Store Activity

                                                                    

 My students enjoy this grocery store activity.  I don't recommend bombarding one grocery store with 30 kids though.  Since there is a grocery store on every corner where I live we split the kids, aides and teachers up into smaller groups and go to a variety of grocery stores.   Students may need help at first trying to find the product with the best price, but it's a great way to incorporate money into the lesson.  This is also fun because at the end, after each group adds up their total, they can tell you which store had the better prices.  It almost becomes a bit of a competition.  Pick one up free at TpT.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Grocery-Store-Hunt

Pharmacy Hunt

Life Skills......


We have a pharmacy within walking distance of our school site so why not do a class on personal hygiene products, right?  The students love getting out, and I am pretty confident they should be able to (in small groups) find all of the items on their own. 

We can add up the totals when we get back to class!http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pharmacy-Hunt

Community Awareness Car Rally

I have been off on spring break so have had a little time to put together some worksheets to finish out the school year. This one I put this together to help the students locate different resources in our community. We are fortunate to have vehicles to take the students around to different places which helps out a lot. The first class we use the worksheet titled "Community Awareness Questions". We go over the list and brainstorm the answers on where to find the resources on our list.

The second day we take the students in small groups out into the community to find the resources. Each group will have the second sheet titled "Community Camera Rally". Each group will also have a camera to take pictures of each designation as we find it. We will print the pictures and go over what we found on another day.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8NVsf6Y1KIvMDVWdXhoMEJRTHVVRXRsd2dmemRMQQ/edit

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8NVsf6Y1KIvdlFvRHh2cm5Ub2VtbFBkdmZRMWt0dw/edit