longisland

A new sensory room in Nassau is providing an interactive learning experience for special-needs students.

The classroom at Maurice W. Downing School in Malverne is designed primarily for students on the autism spectrum.

The room has a bolster swing, a foam pit, trampolines, a whiteboard table and various other activities.<br> <br>Special-education teacher Cristina DaCosta says the room was inspired by private sensory gyms that she's visited on Long Island.

Students with special needs at the kindergarten through second grade school spend about 30 minutes a day in the sensory room.

The room is used for special-education classes and therapy as well as occupational and physical therapy sessions. School officials say they're looking for ways other students can experience the room in the future.

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Ok. Ok. We've got some, uh, kind of ugly stuff moving in but the weekend's gonna be kind of warm most of it for most of it, which is the good takeaway from this is that we are looking for majority of the next few days to be fine. It's just really gonna be our Sunday afternoon and evening hours where we're gonna have to just be weather aware. So what we need to know we're looking at Friday. Not bad. It's gonna actually be a warmer start to a trend that's gonna get even better. By the time we get into our Saturday, Saturday, we're still on the dry end. Temperatures will start to warm into the middle fifties and then Sunday, we're going to be near 60 degrees if not at the 60 degree mark. But that's also when we're gonna be looking at the storm system to move in from a Sunday afternoon into our Monday morning. So around at dinner time or even early into our afternoon is when we're gonna be anticipating to see some rain from the storm system to move its way across to Long Island. Now, early parts of our Sunday, it's mainly going to be light rain. But as we get to the overnight transitioning into early Monday morning, heavy rainfall is going to start to develop for us just into around the five o'clock mark, which is going to lead into our early Monday morning. So we could see between 1 to 2 inches of rainfall by the time the event is over with and gusty winds from 30 to 40 MPH. The good news is though, once we're into our Monday afternoon, it looks to clear up for us, but until we get there overnight, it's partly cloudy cold conditions, temperatures just a degree or two below freezing or at the freezing point. Again, Friday and Saturday, you're not gonna need the heavy coats but still gonna be nice and chilly. At least until we get into our Saturday, quiet conditions heading into our Friday for us. Plenty of sunshine, cloud cover will move in for Saturday and then for Sunday into Monday, we're gonna be monitoring that storm system.

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Sensory room provides interactive learning for special-needs students