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Students with Exceptional Needs Enjoy Annual `Motor Activities Day’
May 9, 2019
About 45 U-46 students from Exceptional Needs II classrooms participated Wednesday in the Specialized Student Services department’s annual “Motor Activities Day” at Canton Middle School in Streamwood. Students enjoyed a variety of musical, sensory, and sports activities located in the gym and nearby rooms.
“We love this event because it brings together a wide variety of students, administrators, and community members to cheer on our students,” said Cheryl Romeo, an Exceptional Needs II teacher at Canton Middle School who organizes the event in collaboration with other teachers and therapists. “But most of all, we enjoy seeing the smiles and hearing the laughter as these students have fun together."
Exceptional Needs II students from Wayne Elementary, Liberty Elementary, Canton Middle School, Larkin High School, and Bartlett High School attended the event. The students were accompanied by their teachers, paraeducators, and nurses, as well as several “buddies” from their home schools. About 30 Canton students volunteered to help with the event, manning stations and playing games with the visiting students.
The day began with an opening ceremony in which several students carried and passed off a faux torch to complete a “torch run.” Three students also used their speech-generating devices to deliver the Pledge of Allegiance, the Special Olympics Oath, and to announce the beginning of the games.
Most of the sports activities and games took place in the Canton gym, where students could bowl, shoot baskets, play tic tac toe with bean bags, and have their wheelchairs guided under a giant parachute. Students also got to experience different textures and colors at sensory stations, listen to music and play with instruments in a music room, and watch a puppet show in the hallway. The half-day event concluded with a medal ceremony for all of the students, distributed by local police officers who also participated in the event.