The Snoezelen multi-sensory room at Marie Bauer Early Education Center was completed in February and was funded by the Inclusive Early Education expansion Program Grant.
The sensory team at Snoezelen, an occupational therapist, and the team at Marie Bauer have been putting this together since June 2023.
“The goal and the vision of the room itself is to develop strategies and techniques for students and for our teachers to support regulation during times of frustration and disappointment and overstimulation," said Heather Wahlburg, Director of Early Education.
WATCH: A look inside the Snoezelen multi-sensory room
There are multi-sensory rooms like this throughout the country at various grade schools as well as hospitals.
“Some students respond and they need to see light and different motions of sensory that way," said Lexi Levanduski, School Specialty Account Representative. "And other students, they're looking for calm and they're looking for no light, right? Because that's a trigger for them.”
Wahlburg says this empowers students to listen to their bodies and know how to advocate for themselves in order to become fully engaged in the classroom.
“Oftentimes, students that become overstimulated by their environment or by their movement after exciting gross motor activities like P.E. or obstacle courses can often need to ground their systems through deep pressure or where their joints kind of compress and ground their systems," Wahlburg said.
“They have a little bit of everything in there," Levanduski said of Paso's multi-sensory room. "They have tactile, they have some stimulation with some lights and panels, but they don't really have a whole lot of sound. I'm not sure if you noticed that in the room, but other students react well to sound and so for that, we have different pieces.”
It’s the first one of its kind so far in the school district and Superintendent Jennifer Loftus says this is a big win for the district.
