March Life Skills Center

Well February flew by and I never had the chance to post about our setting the table center...It was great! The kiddos are now all setting a table for 4 people independently (cups, plates, knives, forks, spoons and napkins). 

For the month of March we are working on the skill of washing dishes.  We are lucky enough to have a sink and work area in our classroom that makes this skill easy for us to teach.

To begin each morning my staff have the task of making a bunch of dirty dishes for students to wash.  We will use lots of fun things to make them dirty, paint...ketchup....icing... whatever we can find that will make a mess ;) To save our sanity, and keep from dirtying dishes all day long, each student is only washing one of each item (one plate, cup, fork, knife and spoon).  The dirty dishes for each student will be placed in a bin next to the sink.

Note the dirty dishes in the bin to the right.
 

To begin the students will turn on the water and get their sponge wet.  After wetting the sponge they add the soap and scrub the dish. 

Soap!

Scrub Scrub Scrub!!

After scrubbing, they rinse the dish and then put it in the drying rack. 

Repeat until all dishes are clean :)

When all the dishes are washed they clean and wring out the sponge.

And that's it!

To use this skill at home I am encouraging parents to have their students pre-wash the dishes either before putting them in the dish washer or before their parents hand wash them (until we have better mastery of the skill).