Jenga, Kerplunk & More

So many fun games to choose from where should I begin... Well board games are excellent for many reasons. First they are fun and motivate students to participate. Second they work on skills like following rules. Third they teach social skills (which can be directed by the teacher and then generalized). Finally they work on fine motor skills. Fine motor is what I want to address. Jenga, Kerplunk, Operation, Perfection were all staples in my classroom. Games can teach so many skills that I tried to work them in several times a week. The motor involved in playing the games listed above is great and some students may require assistance from another individual. Playing a game to work on motor skills helps to diversify the motor practice from things like writing. When you are at a store looking at the games think about the level of fine motor skill involved in the task. Some are obvious like the ones I listed. Even things like lifting and lowering the tiles in the game Guess Who involves motor skills. Connect 4 involves picking up the tile and placing it in the correct slot that works on motor skills. Holding a hand of cards during games like Uno involves the motor to hold and release one card at a time. Also picking up one card at a time from a flat surface can be challenging.    

Word Families

Word families are also known as chunk words. These consist of words that end in the same pattern for example the "at" word family includes: cat, hat, bat, sat, rat, etc. The "ug" word family includes: bug, slug, rug, mug, shrug, etc. For students that are struggling to learn to read, word families are a way to boost reading because once the student understands the word pattern you can add a different consonant to the beginning of the words and they should be able to sound out the remainder of the word with practice.  

Household Tasks

The importance of being able to complete simple household tasks is a large accomplishment and one that requires practice. In my set of TEACCH tasks I included things like matching and folding socks, folding wash cloths, and sorting silverware into a silverware caddy.  

Thankful Turkey

Talk with your child about what it means to be thankful. Picture books can help with this talk. Here are a few books that I liked to use to teach about being thankful: "Thanksgiving is for Giving" by Margaret Sutherland, "The Most Thankful Thing" by Lisa Mccourt and Cyd Moore, and "Little Critter Just So Thankful" by Mercer Mayer. These books describe what it means to be thankful in very simple terms. Next create a Turkey, you can find many different patterns online. On each turkey feather write something you are thankful for. These things could include: family, friends, home, school, pets, food, toys, etc. You could also create a thankful tree. Write the names of the students or family members on the trunk of the tree and then trace and cut out hand prints to be used as leaves and everyone writes what they are thankful for on their hand prints.  

Prepositions

Speech is an integral part of our daily world. Teaching key components of speech such as prepositions will benefit social interactions. I like to use figure play sets to teach prepositions. You can find sets of animals, character sets such as Disney, and other figures at various stores. For example if you had a Mickey Mouse figure you would say "Where is Mickey?" place Mickey on the box, behind the box, in front of the box, above the box, etc. The reason this works well is because you use a high interest character to teach the skill. Next ask the child to "Put Mickey on the box" Here is a short list of prepositions: in, on, under, beside, between, above, next to, and in front. After this skill is learned work on asking the child to place everyday objects in certain places such as "put your shoes under your bed" and "put your dishes in the sink"  

Green - Red Writing

Students that are learning to write have a difficult time knowing where on a blank piece of paper to begin and where to stop. I have had students begin writing in the middle of the page, on the far right, on the bottom, etc. Use a green maker to draw a line all the way down the left hand side of the page. Write the word "Go" at the top above the green line. With a red marker draw a line all the way down the right hand side of the page. At the top above the red line write "stop" This is a strong visual cue to help the child see where the writing should start and stop. The way to fade this prompt is to shorten the length of the line, until it is gone, and then remove the words that say "go" and "stop"