Let's Cook!

ESY has started! Our second day was spent at the grocery store following a grocery list and collecting items for our weekly cooking. Before leaving the classroom, we had the students come up with the ingredient list for tacos, grilled cheese, and s'mores. 

Then the students collected the items as we went through the store. 

The students used the self check out line to further their level of independence. We held up the line for about twenty minutes, but it was worth it!

Then we finally finished. The students will be making tacos tomorrow! 

Dog days of Summer

Sorry, yet another non-work related post but Mr. Jack is the reason! We picked this cutie up on Saturday! Using a lot of positive reinforcement and ABA strategies to teach this pup- same thing we do all year round in my classroom! ( I guess that's work-related) not looking forward to unpacking and setting up an entire new classroom. Jack is distracting me from this stress until we go back. ESY starts next week already! Ah! Then hopefully my room will be cleaned and ready to set up by mid-July. Anyway..here's Jackie boy!

So stinkin cute. Enjoy your Fourth of July!

Work un-related post

Finally on summer break! Even if its short lived until ESY starts..oh well, catching rays while I can. Happy summer!

I scream, you scream!

We all scream for ice cream! Yay for June! Why is it that the last two months of school are the most stressful?! Between IEP meetings, progress reports, goals and objectives, and yes, packing up a huge classroom (moving down the hall, so annoying!) I am ready for some stress relief. How about some ice cream?? Lets turn it into a science project that addresses the following goals: following a recipe, social interactions and language, and a few other ice cream themed activities throughout the day. Plus we get to make and taste our very own home made ice cream. I found the recipe on Boardmaker share for Shake and Make ice cream:

                                       

Here are my students making ice cream!

The ice cream was a bit mushy.. But the kids still enjoyed it! 

I found this cute art project on Pinterest:

Our versions:

 I also found this cut, paste and matching activity on Boardmaker share,

Lastly, we played ice cream bingo! Also found on Boardmaker share.

Pool Days

Once a month we go swimming to work on social skills, gross motor, following a schedule and following directions. An occupational therapist accompanies our group on these trips, and she works with our group on these skills. Here is her schedule of water activities (It has seen better days, but it is the end of the year!)

Here are the students using the blue water weights (wings)

http://multiplyabledclassroom.blogspot.com/

And throwing balls over the rope, and to a friend. 

We were able to call a gym/wellness center at the beginning of the year and schedule a monthly time slot of 30 minutes for free! Life guard included. We couldn't get a spot for ESY this summer but hopefully next year!

Life's a beach in room 107...

Yea right!! Well, at least today was. We spent the day at the beach along with our friends from our neighboring school. I thought I would do a beach scavenger hunt, and a science lesson on what we could collect, but that kind of went out the window when we got there. The kids were so excited to play in the sand, build castles, fly kites and play paddle ball with each other that I threw out the "academic" activities. Social play and expressive language can and are, just as important for some of my students anyway. Maybe tomorrow we can write about the beach and count our shells :)

Father's Day Cards

Things have been so crazy this week that I almost forgot about having my students create a father's day card. Oops! Luckily I found a quick and easy card to create, and it goes along with our beach theme this week. Here is the link for the card I found: Fish Card
We used construction paper, scrapbook paper, yarn, and glitter.

Here is how ours came out, pretty cute!

And one quick writing activity for my higher students:

Here is a link for a similar survey for students to fill out: Father survey. The answers can be pretty comical..
Happy Father's day!