1st Graders Swearing

The Chinese Emerson Teacher is currently staying in my home. She came home the other day and told me that she taught her little first graders how to say, "yes" and "no" in Chinese. The word for yes is "shi" the word for no essentially means not yes and is said, "bu shi" pronounced similar to a not so nice a word in English. Just put the 2 words together and see what they sound like... Now picture this cute little class of 6 year olds going around telling their teacher "bu shi" "bu shi"

My Logo



I feel all official because I have an actual logo. Soon there will also be a website for the tutoring business, and then apps for the ipad and ipod. Everything is coming together slowly but surely. I didn't know that when the animals were painted on my basement wall that they would eventually become so much a part of my business. 

TEACCH Colors and Motor

TEACCH Task

Here is a simple task that works on basic color matching along with fine motor. Cut squares of colored card stock and laminate. Then purchase colored paper clips from a supply store. The task is for the student to place each paper clip on the correct color of paper. One way to make this task a little more challenging would be to use all white paper with only the color word on each piece of paper. With this format the student would have to read the words. I received this idea from another educator.

TEACCH Assembly Task

Looking for more tasks to have your students work on? Here is one that many of your students will enjoy. Using blocks from larger to smaller based on your student's fine motor skills. Give the students the necessary pieces to build a particular object along with the printed instructions. This helps with patterns, following direction, and simple assembly. Check out the Lego website to see lots of monthly ideas. http://creative.lego.com/en-us/parentscorner/monthlybuilds/

Hide and Strength

I have been working with a few kids that lack fine motor strength. Each week we try different fine motor strengthening exercises. My new favorite that is highly motivating is to hide a desired toy inside theraputty. One child I work with loves cars. I let him watch me wrap his theraputty all around the car. Then he had to work his little fingers to unwrap the car. We started off with the softest theraputty and are gradually working up in strength levels. He found the car and was so excited. To my surprise he folded the putty back over the car and hid it so he could find the car again.

This idea of hiding items in theraputty I have used in the past with my TEACCH tasks. I hid pegs from peg boards. The students task was to find all the pegs and pull them out of the theraputty. I have hid small plastic animals in the theraputty. The task is simply to find and remove all items from the theraputty.

Switches

If you are looking for an inexpensive way to try voice output for a child that is non-verbal/less-verbal, I suggest looking at Learning Resources. They now make a small switch called "Talk Point" These are tiny and only cost around $7.00. I just purchased a set of 7. They are easy to record with 10 seconds of recording time. You could use these switches for so many things. One thing I enjoy is using a switch that goes between home and school where the parents and teachers can record a brief message that the child shares when he/she arrives at school and at home. This is a way to say, "I did ....at school or home" The switches could be mounted on a wall using Velcro or other adhesive. Oh so many uses.

Velcro and the Many uses

My classroom had the carpet on the walls which was wonderful because all my bulletin boards were held up with Velcro. One other use that I have loved for Velcro is to label areas on the carpet. I purchased sewing hook, rough side Velcro (non-sticky back). Then on the side, that does not have Velcro and using a Sharpie you can label your Velcro tags. I placed a strip of Velcro by my 2 classroom doors that said, "Line Up" For my carpet area I had a few kids that could not sit by each other so I placed their names on Velcro and placed them away from each other. With Velcro you can easily pull it off the carpet and move it somewhere else when need be.