Valentine's Day Boxes

Happy Valentine's Day!! I hope everyone lived through the sugar and chaos every class party seems to bring!

This year my team has been sending home monthly "home projects" to have the students work on with their families. We have found this to be important because many of our students do not recieve homework so we wanted to make sure they still sat down at least once each month to work on something with their parents. This gives them a chance to show off how hard they have been working on those fine motor skills!

This month we had the kids make Valentine Boxes. I used this great letter from Jennifer at Empowering Little Learners which cut down on the prep time on my end (what teacher doesn't love that?!).

I was so pleased with a lot of our boxes and the kids were super excited to share what they made.

Here are some pictures of their creations:

Here are several of our boxes.

This student had the cutest dog house box complete with a life-size replica of his best friend (his dog Sky).

Here is a great box for a LaLaLoopsy Lover!

This is an adorable hugging monster box.

Complete with handy trap door (This student was ecstatic about this feature)!

Valentine's Day Activities for the Special Education Classroom

Happy Monday and Happy (almost) Valentine's Day!!

I never used to make a big production of Valentine's Day in my classroom. We always focused on Feelings and made Valentine's Day more of a secondary theme. However, then I found this super cute book from the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond and now we do a whole unit on Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse!

This super cute book is great for talking about Valentine's Day but it is extra awesome for talking about friendship and why we love our friends because in the story Mouse makes different valentine cards for each of his friends based on what he loves about them.

On my TPT store, you can find my Happy Valentine's Day Mouse! Picture Book Communication and Comprehension Supports which includes printables,  IEP goal ideas, and progress monitoring sheets including these vocabulary boards which can be made into a fun memory or matching game...

...and this sentence-building board which can be printed and used right away or made into an interactive velcro board. 

Grab this unit here by clicking the image below:

To go with this theme, last year I had the idea to have the kids go around and say something they loved about each of their classmates. At first, I thought this may be a little difficult for some of my kids with poor verbal skills to do but in the end I was very touched with their thoughtfulness! It was a great activity to take a break to show our appreciation for our friends and at the same time it really made each student feel good about themselves. What is a better lesson than that?!

For this activity, I write the student's name on the line and then fill in each heart with something kind a classmate shares like in the example below. 

To grab this activity and 11 more activities you can do with your class for Valentine's Day, visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store to get my Valentine's Day Thematic Group Activities Unit. Some of my favorite activities from this unit include:

Valentine's Day BINGO: An easy way to work on vocabulary, joint attention, and matching. 

Valentine Delivery Game Board: Another fun way to practice a variety of skills! This game is open-ended so that you can use any flashcards you want such as vocabulary, spelling words, sight words, math facts, and more! 

Milkshakes Visual Recipe: Who doesn't love a good milkshake?! My favorite memory of this recipe was using the blender with an adapted switch so all of my students could participate in blending their own milkshake. 

Valentine Letters: Another way we spread the Valentine's Day love was these cute letters where every student could write a valentine to each of their classmates. I loved seeing everyone's faces light up when they saw the nice things their friends had to say about them. 

Clifford's First Valentines Day Story Board: Another fun Valentine's Day story is Clifford's First Valentine's Day by Norman Bridwell. This story board is divided into categories by wh-question word (who-what doing-what-where). Students can use it to make sentences from top to bottom (who is doing what where) or answer comprehension questions. 

Candy Heart Graphing: There never seems to be any shortage of candy hearts in the classroom this time of year. We have fun each year sorting and graphing our heart before eating them of course!

Love them both? Now you can BUNDLE AND SAVE by clicking the image below to get my Valentine's Day Bundle! 

Teaching Shape Identification--A Multisensory Approach

I have shared many times how important I feel multi-sensory teaching is and my little group of needy learners reinforces my belief in this more and more each day.

Today we had a fun shapes review lesson and the kids did great!

We started off with this cute youtube video from KidsTV123:

I LOVE teaching with YouTube!! It is a great way to start off a lesson and get the kids engaged. I am beginning to use some of these KidsTV123 videos but I REALLY like the Super Simple Songs  youtube page... (for more about these songs and for free resources visit their website HERE)

For my the rest of my lesson, I actually used Super Simple Songs Shape Song and Shape Song 2. But I only have the audio. I haven't been able to find a video for these songs but they are simple and slow enough that my kiddos do just fine listening. I also make some manipulatives to go along with the song and reinforce shape identification.

For each student, I made a shape mat using Boardmaker clip art. I laminated each board and then traced the shapes with glue to make the lines raised. During the song the students used their fingers to trace the shapes (I tried this activity prior to making the lines raised and they just could not trace them!! The raised lines made a world of difference!!).

Then, I gave students foamie shapes to match during the song. The foamies were a variety of sizes and colors which made this a little tricky but they did great.

The combination of auditory, tactile, and visual input kept the kids engaged and they did much better on their assessment after the review than they did before the lesson! Wahoo!

Sensory Saturday--Sensory Folders

Wow it has been a while since I have had a Sensory Saturday! But my classroom has been a sensory hot mess lately so I wanted to share the great strategy that I have began to use in the classroom that is both quick and easy--Sensory Folders.

 My sensory folders take into account two basic sensory needs: Alerting and Calming. To learn more about these sensory needs check out my handout on Sensory Supports for the Classroom. Unfortunately I cannot take full credit for this idea because my wonderful teaching partner also uses something very similar based on one of her student's needs.

I created sensory folders for two students in particular who have completely opposite sensory needs. The first student is typically a lump on a log! He is very low-tone and not really engaged in our activities most of the time. For him I made the yellow "alerting" folder.

In the folder, I provided a variety of alerting choice options such as spinning in the teachers chair, tactile brushing, or frog jumps.

The second student is a live wire! She is in constant motion all day--bouncing, rocking, flapping. Just watching her wears me out so trying to teach when she is so wound up is totally exhausting! She got the blue "calming" folder.

In the folder, I provided calming choice options such as joint compressions, body sock, or weigthed ball toe touches.

You may notice that the same items can be used on both charts. This depends on the way you use them. For instance, I use a therapy ball to alert a child by having them sit on it and bouncing them while it is used to calm them by having them lie on the floor while I roll it over them providing deep pressure input. A hand massage with peppermint lotion is alerting while vanilla is calming. And while a student is lying prone on a scooterboard and using their arms to move forward provides calming, heavy work input having them lie prone and hold a jump rope while you "whip" them around in circles or in a erratic zig-zag motion is very alerting (but tiring for the teacher!!!).

Hope these folders gave my readers some good ideas about practical sensory supports. Head over to my TPT Store to pick up a copy of your own!