Hidalgo Independent School District believes life skills play a critical role in a well-rounded and comprehensive education.
Hidalgo Elementary School educators focus on building life skills as it is an important exercise to help students develop and to adopt good habits.
Life skills teacher, Sarae Bernal incorporated a Spa Day event into her learning lesson to emphasize the importance of hygiene and body awareness.
“Today we taught the students the importance of self-awareness, body awareness and hygiene,” said Bernal. “We spoke about keeping our nails clean and short by making hand scrubs with natural ingredients.”
Bernal intends for these life skills to become building blocks to help students apply the knowledge they gain in the classroom to future real-world problems and situations. Additionally, life skills provide students with important necessary tools to implement into their daily routines.
By educating life skills, students become efficient, gain self-confidence, but they also learn to be cooperative, communicative, and independent.
“I learned how to keep my hands and nails clean, so bacteria doesn’t get in my body,” explained Jayden Muñiz, fourth grade student. “Spa Day was relaxing, and my favorite part was using the brush to clean my own nails, I loved it!”
During this life skill education activity, the overall student’s personality was taken into consideration. Therefore, sensory, and different types of textures along with mixing different liquids and solids together came into play. Also, the science and math aspects were incorporated into the lesson.
“Hands-on lessons give the students the opportunity to learn by having fun,” said teacher assistant (TA), Maria Quintero. “The students learned how to exfoliate their hands and nails, but what made it more fun was when they had to prepare their own hand scrub.”
The environment was inviting and calm. Moreover, the students were focused, engaged and present during their activity, but most importantly they had so much fun mixing the ingredients and blending the food coloring to create a hand scrub.
Bernal looks forward to integrating this activity again next semester.
“This is a very special event because it’s the very first time this event takes place here, at Hidalgo Elementary, and hopefully we can propagate it again next semester in the Spring,” Bernal said.
This was an event that brought students and staff members together. Bernal and her team took the initiative to gently brush, scrub and massage the students’ hands to make them feel as if they were in an actual spa retreat.
“We were really happy with the success we had this time and I know that next semester we will have a bigger success,” said Bernal enthusiastically. “It’s all for the students because they need to learn the importance of hygiene and it’s a very important life skill to attain as we relax and enjoy our bodies.”