When visiting Village Elementary School next, don’t miss the hallway that leads to the Ram’s Cafe. In the hallway, one can choose to soar like an Eagle, scurry on logs like a mouse, use bear paws for wall push-ups, hop like frogs from lily pad to lily pad, swim like fish, duck walk along logs, slither like snakes in the marsh, or crab walk to the ocean where you can jump like whales.

Having done any or all of these movements, one would have completed the new sensory movement path designed and created by Village students for their peers.

Village’s occupational therapist, Kristina Pontbriand, brought the sensory path idea to principal Dr. Porter, in hopes to create a safe space for students to access throughout the day, as needed, to have a true sensory experience in the school.

“The ability to move is a big part of our student’s success and promotes executive functioning skills,” said Pontbriand.

Pontbriand’s sensory path vision provides not only special education students the ability to use this space for self-regulation and movement that supports their functioning within the general education classroom, but to also provide all Village School students the opportunity to enjoy the path through unique movement suggestions.

In many elementary schools, when students are fidgeting, unfocused, or having trouble sitting still in class, teachers send them to a “sensory hallway” and through the path. This takes less than a minute, offering students an opportunity to burn some energy and return to class ready to learn.

Third graders Althea Webber, Tucker Curtis, and Connor McHenry, who were already working around enrichment academics, and fourth-grade teachers Brian Penley and Meghan O’Neil, helped with planning, designing, and implementing the project, thus helping to bring it to life.

The students measured the hallway and Penley took their work and created a grid to scale. The students also thought about how Maine animals move, lending to ideas for the sensory movement path. After many meetings and editing the plans, a theme was voted on and decided that they would combine aspects of the second-grade curriculum, the water cycle, with those of the fourth-grade curriculum, Maine animals, to create a vibrant and student-engaged sensory movement path.