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What is it made of?

One of our favorite Orientation & Mobility (AKA – O&M) lesson activities is the Scavenger Hunt! I like to use a “community bag” into which I have placed a number of different objects. This bag can be the source of a lot of different types of lessons. On this day, my student was challenged to choose three objects, figure out what they were made of, and then travel around the school and locate additional objects that were made of the same material. As we locate various matching objects, we take pictures to document the results of our Scavenger Hunt and share them with his family or teachers. As with most of our weekly “challenges,” some answers are easier to find than others; for example it is more common to find objects made of wood or plastic. However, part of O&M training is to encourage students to use creative, out-of-the-box thinking to solve their assigned tasks and that was needed for this week’s challenge!

One of the objects that my student had chosen this week was a coin. We were not quite sure what it was made of exactly, but for the scavenger hunt we decided it was okay to find things made of metal or brass. (During lessons, when time permits, we may also take time to look up the answers to questions like: “What is Brass Made of?” It’s an alloy of copper and zinc!) Thankfully, my student’s school is actually very old. Half of the building has original doors, woodwork and hardware. This photo was taken when my student, very excitedly, located the exact matching color of the old coin, in the door hardware of one of school’s original doors! We thought that the photo was perfect — and as his reward, my student was allowed to keep the coin!