What's In The Beans

I have used this lesson with visually impaired/blind students who have some language and others who used sign language.

Materials needed:  A large bowl with lid

                                  A bag of beans or a mixture of beans uncooked

                                  Objects like: unsharpened pencil, earser, small rock, paper clip chains, small ball, or anything the student may know.

Procedure:

Student is given the bowl of beans and told to identify the hidden objects inside the bowl.  Students who at times are left without anything to do becuase of visiual limitations are able to find the objects.  If the student finds something they don't know I signed the name or verbally told them what it was.

I worked at a middle school where a blind bi-lingual student would be given a toy that he stimmed on  for almost the entire time he was at school.  I subbed for his teacher and brought in the beans with objects which I switched out.  His parents came one day and he asked them in Spanish what the "beans" were.  His parents told them in his native language they were beans.  He smiled and kept finding objects during some classtime.  This made this student more stimulated to find the pobjects and this generated more activities that he joined in.