Yesterday Mrs. Melanie Newton, one of our EC teachers, received word that her latest Donors Choose project is 100% funded! Back in July, she set up this ambitious project to provide an after-school Lego Club for students in third through ninth grades.

In Mrs. Newton’s Donors Choose proposal she stated:

“LEGO therapy is an appropriate approach for students with social communication difficulties, anxiety, and depression. LEGO therapy has been shown to be an effective approach for improving social initiation, problem-solving, turn-taking, and teamwork skills. It also improves work readiness and fine motor skills. A LEGO Club will help my students gain all of these skills using LEGO’s. This project will include students with autism, as well as children with depression or anxiety, along with typically developing peers.”

When asked what inspired her to set up this project she stated that, “I was inspired to do this project because of the number of students (particularly those with Autism and other disabilities) that tend to love working with Legos and have a need for social-emotional skill development.  At a professional development training at an NC DPI EC Conference in Greensboro a couple of years ago, I went to a training session that talked about the benefits of Lego-based therapy. After doing some of my own research I became really motivated to start my own Lego Club here at Clover Garden.”

Mrs. Newton and her students received funding from several private individuals and large corporations like LabCorp, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Verizon. In total, she raised over $1,000 to be spent on Lego kits! Our students will have access to kits ranging from the Statue of Liberty to the NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander, and Paris Skyline With Eiffel Tower. No doubt these wonderful resources will spur conversations that delve into science, architecture, and space and allow students to build those social-emotional skills that the project is based on.

Mrs. Newton’s Lego Club will be an on-campus opportunity once we are back in a traditional school setting.

The Clover Garden Community would like to thank Mrs. Newton for her commitment to her students and innovative approach to teaching. We would also like to thank all of the generous individuals and organizations that helped fund our new Grizzly Lego Club!

 

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