Do they still let 11 year old kids do this?
In primary school, in primary 7 (the last year of primary school ~11 years old for the English/Yanks) we all got to take turns going in groups, one afternoon a week to the local special needs school to help out. Nothing too strenous or complicated really (we were 11) but joining in and helping look after the kids alongside the regular teachers and helpers.

The best bit was the 'safe play room', basically a room with padded walls, and lots of blocks and wedges and balls you could muck about with without bashing your head on anything. Great fun for the kids at the school, and naturally just as much fun for the 11 year old helpers...
There was another cool room called the 'sensory room' (if I remembered the name right, it was ten years ago) dulled lights, and lots of stuff like dangling fibre optics that lit up prettily, those big tubes of water that had bubbles flowing through them and all sorts.

The best bit was that the school was just over the fields to the back of my house, so cut the walk home afterwards to half of what I would have had to walk if I was at school instead.

Sadly now closed, as many useful council establishments are. with plans for the lovely new international school full of the rich teenagers of the oil industry to be rebuilt there when the new bypass flattens that. Fantastic.
(442, Tue 15 May 2007, 11:37, Reply)