Monday, October 26, 2015

Sped Tricks & Treats {including a FREEBIE}

Are you looking for some tricks and treats this Halloween?! You're in the right place! If you're just reading my blog post to start, be sure to keep hoping along at the end of this post until you've come back to my blog. Myself and many other special education bloggers are sharing with you tricks we use in our classrooms and some freebie treats too!


I had a hard time deciding exactly what trick I was going to share with you from my classroom. I often feel like all the things I'm doing in my classroom are all things everyone else does too and therefore it's not really a "trick" if everyone knows about it already.

Hopefully I've got something you're not already doing in your classroom & something you'll be interested in trying!


To help keep myself organized with all of the visuals we use in the classroom I color code them. I like putting our visuals on construction paper before I laminate them. Then I don't have to run to the color printer to put in card stock, then back to the classroom, blah blah blah. I just put them on construction paper for added durability.

By color coding them I can quickly remember what visuals go where in the classroom and it's also helpful for my aides too. For example I snapped some photos of the visuals we use when we are sitting on the carpet. All of these visuals are on yellow construction paper.





Sand table visuals go on blue construction paper, work box visuals on black construction paper, etc. Two of these visuals are actually taped to our message board so there isn't exactly the need to remember where they are used in the classroom; but that will be nice at the end of the year when it's time to pack everything up for the summer.

Hopefully that's just a simple small trick you can take back to your classroom. It comes in handy the most with smaller visuals that can easily be placed in an apron pocket or left on a table and misplaced. And now for the even better stuff; THE TREAT!

I can only image that a few of you looked at the pictures I shared from our greeting/carpet time and thought to yourself- "Hey! I want that for my classroom!" The schedule that I use for the things we do during our greeting time would be a little more challenging to share with you seeing as that probably looks very different in a lot of classrooms. But what I can share with you is the visual board for choosing where you want to play. There is enough space for 10 different options and these options will always be changing depending on what toys/games are available that week. Students simply move the picture to the bottom to create the sentence and then point to each picture as they repeat the sentence or an adult repeats it for them.

The freebie includes some images of possible toy selections & choices you may have in your classroom, but you can obviously use pictures you have existing in your classroom already. I CANNOT share the pictures shown in the image above that are for block area, toy area, etc. because those are images from our High Scope curriculum so they will NOT be apart of the freebie.


Click the image below to download your freebie!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Lets-Play-Visual-Support-for-Autism-2170949

Don't forget to keep going! Find more great tricks and treats by clicking below and heading over to the next blog!

http://mindfulrambles.blogspot.com/


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Monday, October 12, 2015

October Themed Task Boxes {and a Giveaway!}

I don't typically dedicate many task boxes to theme specific activities. Because I keep such a large amount of boxes available to myself for planning I'd have to find storage space (that I'm out of) for activities when I swap them out for themed ones. This has always seemed like more trouble to me than it was worth.


HOWEVER. Yes, there is a however. At the start of this year I added an "art cart" to our classroom. One side is for our art projects and the other side I put more task boxes on. I've decided to dedicate this section of boxes to themed activities. This way I have a designated section where I can swap out activities and then store them in my seasonal tubs and take them out each year as needed. The photo above is said cart. Not all the bins were full when I snapped this photo, but now they are.

Now I'll share a photo of what is in each box-- these posts tend to get a little lengthy, but perfect for getting ideas for your own classroom. They ended up being mostly sorting tasks, but you could also make modifications to turn these into matching tasks as well.

I was super excited about this idea when it dawned on me. I always see awesome stickers/felt objects for holiday themes but never know quite how to incorporate them into task boxes. Then it hit me- bottle caps! You could also use water bottle caps too. Just stick them on top and then place one sticker in the bottom of a container for sorting. The two boxes below are both sorting by color; green eyeballs vs. blue eyeballs and orange pumpkins vs. yellow pumpkins.




I forgot that this one was a put in task. You could make it a sorting task by adding hole protectors around the holes in the lid and coloring them for the colors of the pipe cleaners. I kept this just simple, they have to place the pipe cleaners into the holes in the top of the container.



I've since added more white pom-poms to this sorting activity, I needed to borrow some from another teacher! I found these small containers at Family Dollar and was so excited-- perfect for Halloween sorting! AND they were 3 of each color for $1. Great deal!



I also found these Halloween colored containers and erasers at Dollar General. Seriously, if a store carries anything Halloween scope out those isles! These containers have Halloween pictures/words on the sides so I probably won't re-purpose them like I can the others from the previous picture, but again 3 of each color for $1!


I took some existing materials I already had, ice cube tray and ghost erasers, and this box was super simple to put together. Simply place one ghost in each spot. I have another box like this with pom-poms. I think it's a great "pre-cursor" for one to one correspondence.



For these next few boxes I used cards from my shape sorting packs. I just did 2 shapes for each box, but the great thing with these are you can increase the amount of shapes students are sorting depending on their stamina for the work.




These last two boxes are also from an existing {FREEBIE} I have. Sorting pumpkins by color. I did 3 colors on this one because I know my kiddos can sort colors a little faster than shapes.



If you are interested in grabbing the shape sorting cards, click {here} to go to the bundle. If you want to download the free color sorting pumpkins, click {here}.

AND while I still have your attention (I hope) I'm also going to share with you about a great giveaway! Mrs. D's Corner is giving away her fall favorites and we all want you to win!
 
Just follow the Rafflecopter below to enter!



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Sunday, October 04, 2015

Apples & Pumpkins, Oh My!

It's like it's new product Sunday or something. Actually it's more of, it rained all weekend so all I did was laundry and sit on my computer.

Last weekend I finished up my Apple Cookie Trays and made some Apple Shape Sorting cards. I didn't get a chance to blog about them since the timing was a little late I just wanted to get them out there.





This week I worked on Pumpkin Cookie Trays and Pumpkin Shape Sorting cards. This way something would actually be timely for once. (I'm well aware of how terrible I am about that!)


With all of my seasonal cookie tray packs being completed and *almost* every holiday having it's own pack I've decided on making smaller packs (25-30 activity sheets) with a specific theme, i.e. apples and pumpkins. The idea is for these to be smaller packs that you can use for 1-2 weeks while you focus on a specific theme. The smaller pack size also allows me to make them quicker and get out more themes.


The shape sorting cards are so versatile and I am loving these fun themed shapes! You can turn these into file folder activities, add magnets for cookie trays, add velcro and use them in a task box too! I will be using these in task boxes with 2-3 shape cards in each box. Click the images below to go to my TpT store and purchase the shape sorting sets, each priced at $1.25 (with a bundle being offered in the near future).

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Apple-Shape-Sorting-2118231


https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pumpkin-Shape-Sorting-2129760


Here are some previews of the activity pages included in the apple and pumpkin cookie tray activities. You can click the images below to head to my TpT store to purchase them. 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Apple-Themed-Cookie-Tray-Activities-2116801
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pumpkin-Cookie-Tray-Activities-2129533

Thanks for checking out my latest activities! I've got a holiday themed cookie tray pack to get working on so I can offer a holiday bundle to you soon!





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