Four-year-old Kelsey Larrick stood in a courtyard outside of Winfield Elementary School, hands immersed in a bucket of multicolored rice.
Kelsey worked to use sifters to find plastic bugs in the rice, with the help of speech-language pathologist Amy Palazzo.
Around her, students worked at other stations — some sat inside tents on sleeping bags, others fished in a small plastic pool trying to catch plastic fish, a few sat around a pretend campfire reading stories.
For a few hours Friday, Winfield Elementary was transformed into Camp Winfield, an event for special needs students. The camping-themed day was for students who have communication, sensory and physical needs.
Jamie Mutolo, a speech-language pathologist, was the proponent behind this event.
Friday marked the second time they've held it, she said, and it's a collaboration between all of the different special needs programs and the service providers.
The event grew this year because it included more of the academic portion. Camp Winfield is a chance for the special education kids to be successful while learning academics "in a fun, natural environment," Mutolo said.
This year, Mutolo said, they also expanded the event to involve general education students in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade, she said.
"It's working on our kids really getting to communicate with our [general education] friends," she said.
Mutolo said all of the kids, regardless of whether they are in special education or general education, are a community and should be able to interact. They've been working with the general education students in using devices and language systems the other kids use, to help the special education students be able to communicate successfully.
Kelsey, who spoke using the help of Palazzo and a Pragmatically Organized Dynamic Display — a book full or words, symbols and pictures to help communicate — said her favorite part of Friday was getting to sit in a tent on the sleeping bags, which had both stripes and polka dots, and getting to participate in water play. That station involved a large tub of water the kids could splash in, and other contraptions they could use to move water about.
A few feet away, 8-year-old Evalyn Knight sat around the fake campfire with a book. She donned a Camp Winfield T-shirt, a frog and squirrel painted on the lower sides. Palazzo said Evalyn got to help paint the shirt in school.
Evalyn, who also spoke with the help of Palazzo and an electronic PODD, said she liked the tent, and wanted to get to go back and sit in it again.
Mutolo said the hope is to continue the event next year. She said she likes the camp theme for spring time because aspects of it — like campfires, fishing and looking for bugs in nature — could be things that would interest them outside of school time.
"It's giving them success hopefully in an activity they might do with their families," she said.
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