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Classroom Ideas
 
When I taught 1st grade a few years back we did an activity with the kids to help illustrate what one of our eye patching students was experiencing.  I purchased a few boxes of the sticky patches.  We had the kids spend some time decorating the eye patches with markers and crayons.  We had a discussion about muscles and how important it is to exercise those muscles every day so they don't get "lazy".  We spent a few minutes exercising our arm, leg, and face muscles.  We then talked about how our eyes have muscles and sometimes one eye can be weak (or lazy) and one way to fix it is by exercising it.  I explained that by covering the good eye we force the weak eye to workout harder.  We then took the eye patches that we had decorated and each child wore the eye patch.  We walked outside for a few minutes, we worked on a tracing page, and then we looked at books.  A total of 15 minutes of eye patching.  We then got into a group and discussed how we felt.  Most of the kids struggled with the activities.  This gave them great empathy for the patching student and they realized how hard it was to patch.  They never teased him because they knew what it felt like to have the eye patch on.  In fact, many of the students offered him encouragement and praise when he patched.  When it comes to friends, they really will accept the patching as long as they understand what it is for.  It's just like someone coming to class with a cast on their arm.  No one is going to ridicule someone for breaking their arm, there is nothing funny about it.  If the students understand patching, the chances of teasing should lessen.  Of course an older student may tease one day, but the patcher's friend may just stand up and set them straight. 
 
-Cathy Thompson