Super Simple Tech Trick!

So if you're like me, then you have at least one kiddo who isn't using his pointer index to navigate around his iPad.  For me, my kiddo typically uses his thumb, which isn't all that functional to translate to other skills.  My super simple tech tip is this... take a glove (preferably one of the $1 gloves) and cut off the tip of the index finger.  This way, when they are trying to use any finger other than their index finger, the iPad screen won't recognize it and your kiddo is forced to use their index finger on the iPad!

Valentine's Day Activities

Happy Post-Valentine's Day!

Alright, so I didn't quite have time to put up what we did for Valentine's Day, but at least there's the weekend to catch up!  I will admit that some of our activities didn't just occur on Valentine's Day... you've got to have stuff leading up to it too, right? :)

Earlier in the week we did a social group rainbow made out of whole-punched hearts.  I got the idea here on No Time for Flash Cards.  I wish I had taken pictures of the kids while they were working on it - they worked for over on hour on it (8 kids, 2 heart rainbows) and were practicing tons of social skills while working, including fabulous conversations that I wish I had taped!  I was so proud of their final product!

We had so many extra hearts that we glued the hearts on hearts, of course using visuals for where each heart went.  Some kiddos used multiple colors of hearts and some only used one color of heart.  You got to love the kids that just love to use a ton of glue too!

We also had enough to do name tracing with the hearts as well.  

We also worked on counting to 20 with 1:1 correspondence using 10 frames and candy hearts this week.

                                     

                                    

We started off actual Valentine's Day with a super cute idea of growing hearts that I found here.  We started off by talking about what you need to grow things - "seeds", "dirt", "water", and "sun".  Each kiddo got a candy heart that they planted in the pot of soil.  

They then decided to add some water.  They stared at the plant for a few minutes and then decided it didn't grow because it wasn't in the sun, so they took the pot over to the windows.  Thankfully,  we had a community trip so we left while the plants were growing.  After we got back and had lunch, they were super excited to check out the plant and were so excited to see that they had grown into plants!!

Every Friday we do station rotations after our community trips so it was a perfect time to have Valentine-themed activities for everyone.  

We made pink milkshakes, love writing, Don't Eat Pete Valentine Themed, and Valentine's Bingo.

If you've never played Don't Eat Pete, I highly recommend it!  I found the idea here on The Teacher Wife.  I was a bit skeptical as I thought the game could be a total flop and wasn't sure how all of our students would do with it.  The kids (and adults) LOVED it!  It was perfect to work on making group decisions, keeping your brain and body in group, thinking with your eyes, and attending to what others are doing.  We for sure are going to play it again with a different theme!

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog.  Yes, our blog.  We have been talking about starting a blog for a while now and finally decided to jump in and do it.  

We are special education teachers with over 20 years of teaching between us.  Currently three of us work with an autism caseload and one with a mix of autism and emotional-behavioral disorder caseload.  We all work in elementary classrooms with students with varying levels of abilities.

We're so excited to join the blog world and meet all of you!