I am really going to work hard next year on pairing all of my activities with visuals which are a HUGE help. I did that a lot this time around but I want to be more consistent with it. I currently use Smarty Symbols to make my own visuals and some activities. I also own The Dabbling Speechie’s AAC Starter Kit which is BEYOND AMAZING! It has helped my students expand their utterances and with things like requesting, commenting, making choices, greetings, and more!
I wanted to take you through some of my group lessons we did throughout this past school year! Keep reading to see many of the activities with pictures! I will also explain what goals/objectives we worked on and how we completed each one! Overall, it was a VERY successful year!
TO KICK OFF THE SCHOOL YEAR AND START OF THE FALL SEASON, I DECIDED TO DO THESE TWO FUN COOKING ACTIVITIES:
PUMPKIN PLAY-DOH AND APPLESAUCE IN A BLENDER.
Here’s how I completed these two Fall Activities…
As you can see in the first two pictures, I always put out my AAC board before we start. The top half is a Core Board from Felice’s AAC Starter Kit which has things like “Stop”, “Help”, “More”, etc. The bottom half is where I add my visuals depending on the activity.
I use Smarty Symbols to print all of the ingredients, materials, and “actions” needed to complete the activity. Before we start “cooking”, I always go over the board/visuals which is awesome for vocabulary, describing, and “answering questions”.
For Pumpkin Play-Doh the ingredients were flour, salt, water, oil, orange food coloring, and pumpkin pie spice (YUM!). Materials: Small bowl, large bowl, spoon, and a measuring cup. Actions: Mix, Put in, Squeeze, Hands In, Measure, and Smell. I always try to turn it into a “fun” game by asking students to look and find a specified ingredient or action or even have them act out some of the actions (“pretend you are mixing”)!
What I love about both of these cooking activities is that they involve all senses! It’s super important for many of my students to “try” new foods or smell something new. Gotta start them young with exploring new foods and textures!
HALLOWEEN FUN!
Here are three activities I used during the end of October to celebrate Halloween! In the first picture you can see this AWESOME skeleton with MOVABLE limbs that I grabbed from Dollar Tree!! I LOVE DOLLAR TREE BY THE WAY! I printed and laminated a bunch of “spooky” pictures targeting various nouns and actions to velcro to different parts of the skeleton. This was AMAZING for identifying body parts, following directions, prepositions, identifying nouns/actions, and answering questions.
My students totally loved this skeleton so I will definitely be using it again this upcoming Fall! The last two pictures are self explanatory….Ned’s Head and “There was an old lady who swallowed a bat!” Both activities are very engaging and not to mention FUN!! If you have students’ who need to work on describing and attributes then I highly suggest getting Ned’s Head!
What are your “go-to” FALL ACTIVITIES?! I’m always looking for new ideas and activities! Thanks so much for checking out this post!
Kristine
