Miss Hutchison's Class Blog

Be Nice • Work Hard • Learn Well

Down Syndrome Awareness Day!

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We had such a great day celebrating Joshua and learning about Down Syndrome today! Here are a few snippets from our day. 

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First, Miss Hutchison made this slideshow to share with all of Georgetown earlier this week. Many other classrooms “Rocked Their Socks” today, too! 

Next, we’ve spent the past few days reading lots of books about Down Syndrome to learn more about Joshua’s super abilities. Here are just a few of our favorite reads. Most of these books were donated to our classroom by Joshua’s family – thank you so much!! 

Today, we did some activities to really try to experience what some parts of the school day are like for our friends with Down Syndrome. We gave lots of extra hugs and love to one another today, just like Joshua loves to do! 

Next up we discussed muscle tone.  This is such a significant part of the struggles children with Down Syndrome face.  Miss Hutchison did a demonstration to show how speaking can be difficult for children with low tone.  She put marshmallows in her mouth.  We had all the kids try to speak to one another with marshmallows in their mouth.
We also tried writing with a sock on our hand to show how writing can be a bit more tricky as well.
Plus, we practiced some ASL signs – this is another way people with Down Syndrome can communicate because talking can be hard (we learned that with the marshmallow activity). Joshua taught the class some of the signs he uses often, and he showed us his LAMP iPad, which is a language devices he uses at school and at home. The kids loved learning from Joshua!
Our last activity was creating our own unique socks.  We talked about how boring it would be if we were all the same.  We decorated our socks and wrote about things that make us unique and special!
The day was so much fun for everyone and I feel like they all have a better understanding of Down Syndrome and how important it is to treat people with respect & include everyone. Thank you again to the Fountain family for your donations of wrist bands & books, and for sharing your sweet Joshua with us. We are one lucky class of first graders! 

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