Learn the parts of the brain for kids with a fun brain activity and FREE printable brain worksheets! Clever human body activities for kids!
Kids and young adults need extensive practice in strengthening their executive functioning skills. Executive functions are the processes in our brains that help us accomplish all tasks from beginning to end. We use them when we plan our day, organize our materials, begin a chore, focus on important
Listen to this Special Ed Podcast with 15 great ideas for Functional Centers for students with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism in High School. Read more and subscribe today!
We loved making this brain hat (UPDATE: if that link won't work for you, try this : Go to the link here: https://ellenjmchenry.com/ and...
This water lab is a super fun way to introduce nonlinear functions in an algebra class. The math department at my school uses this lab as a way to start the school year in Algebra 2. The students love it, and by the end of the lab every student understands what it means to be an algebraic function!
This worksheet contains three tasks: 1. Read and match the words with the pictures 2. Wordsearch. Find 9 school things 3. Put the right words. Hope it will be useful:) - ESL worksheets
Listen to this Special Ed Podcast with 15 great ideas for Functional Centers for students with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism in High School. Read more and subscribe today!
Task initiation is one of the many executive functioning skills that can be a big problem for kids. It happens to all of us. We procrastinate. From the youngest toddler to the oldest among us, we all procrastinate in one way or another. Hey, that stack of bills mixed with junk mail over there on the ... Read more
A master list of a wide variety of executive functioning activities to improve skills for your children or students. 50 fun activities!
Build a Heart Model - STEM activity about heart rates and how blood flows through the body. Engineer a functioning model of a beating heart.
I couldn't live without a scooter board at work or home. There are endless uses and developmental benefits for children who engage in scooter board
This Blog and Infographic will review tonic reflexes, their significance if the reflex persists beyond the typical age range, and the possible impact on a child’s functioning and role performance. Last but not least, this blog will suggest therapeutic interventions that are known to help inhibit the activation of tonic reflexes and advance postural control as a foundation for optimal functioning.
Planning, organization, time management, and self-control. These are just a few of the extremely critical executive functioning skills that we use every day to accomplish tasks and be successful. We use them so regularly that we may forget their importance. But to kids and teens (and yes, even adult
Learn key executive functioning skills by age, and engaging executive functioning activities to boost development for toddlers, kids, and teens!
Last week Jaś has been very busy working on the animal classification lapbook. Lately it's been very difficult to get him interested in doing any…
Linear Functions This is a great one page cheat sheet on the following three forms of a line... Intercept Form, Point Slope Form, and Standard Form Also included, is how to find intercepts and slopes. Two sheets are included, one in color and the other in black and white. Easily made into a t...
Practical impulse control strategies to assist both you and your child to cope better with this executive skill weakness or improve it.
Study the respiratory system and determine your lung capacity and what might affect it. Students will calculate and make conclusions.
The first week of school generally consists of getting to know one another, in addition to discussion and practice of classroom procedures and routines. We also got our creative juices flowing by creating summer reflection writing pieces, squiggle stories, and "All About Me" mini-posters. Students are getting to know one another and me, and we are learning to work together to build a successful and positive classroom environment. On Wednesday, I wrote out six questions, all having to do with how to make our classroom and ourselves function to the highest level, on six pieces of chart paper. Students, in groups of three, spent two minutes at each chart, collaborating and responding to each question on a sticky note. After all groups visited each chart paper station, I hung all of the charts up and we discussed each answer and noticed some very interesting trends. Here's the finished product, which you can click on to enlarge: Inspired by Life in 4B To tie into the previous activity, I was inspired by my wonderful teammates, Mrs. Fadden and Ms. Mattox, to develop at class pledge with my students. We reviewed our responses to the above questions, and then we put all of the ideas together to form a cohesive paragraph that we have all agreed will help us to remember why we are here at school and what our common goal is. Below is the rough draft of our class pledge (which I will type up, make pretty, and have all of my students sign): Since we were able to develop a class goal (to achieve success in third grade), I also had each student determine an individual goal after reading the story Matthew's Dream by Leo Lionni. I displayed our "Hopes and Dreams" for third grade near the classroom door, so that we can refer to, and revisit, them throughout the year. Lots of students are interested in learning how to sharpen their cursive skills, multiplication and division skills. I was very impressed by the number of students ready to take on our 40 book challenge! More on that later! Here's our class display of our hopes and dreams for third grade: Lastly, I read a book called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? The premise is that everyone carries an invisible bucket everywhere they go. When your bucket is "filled" you feel happy.When your bucket is "empty" you feel sad or upset. People can fill buckets by lending a helping hand, smiling, being kind, including others in games, and more. People can empty buckets by teasing, being ungrateful, acting disrespectfully, and more. I encourage my students to recognize the actions of bucket-fillers by writing them quick note and sticking it in their bucket display. This helps make everyone feel good. When we feel good, we want others to feel good. Therefore, kindess is passed from person to person. This is our bucket-filling display, complete with ways we can fill buckets and ways we can empty buckets: I look forward to more of these types of meaningful activities that promote teamwork, kindness, and achievement with your child!
Your child will love reading nonfiction texts after reading this exciting dinosaur facts worksheet! Strengthen your child’s reading comprehension skills by challenging him or her to pick out key details of the passage. Keep kids motivated with fun texts from Kids Academy!
Seven simple and actionable steps for children to develop a functional grasp pattern that don't involve a pencil grip!
Learn what is under your skin with a fun life-size human body project for kids. Download FREE skeletal system bones and organ printables!
A twist on classic sun prints using sunscreen Also acts as an experiment to explain the function of sunscreen to kids!
We all have had students who have a difficult time with impulse control, planning ahead, time management, starting a task, completing a tas...
DNA Play - a fun app teaching What is DNA for kids. Kids learn DNA and gene via interactive play and character building. It is a cool science app for kids.
As therapists, we often times see clients with vision needs that impact functional skills. Visual processing is a complex topic and convergence insufficiency is just one area. Read below to find out more about convergence in kids, to understand exactly what is convergence insufficiency, and how convergence plays into functional skills and learning. **DISCLAIMER** I am ... Read more
18 working memory games and strategies designed to develop a child’s memory, planning, and organization skills in a fun and effective way!
142 speech topics for children that even their parents will enjoy helping them with! Good for middle school upwards.
Need human body worksheets for kids? These worksheets are a great way to introduce the human body organs and their functions to your kids.
Practical impulse control strategies to assist both you and your child to cope better with this executive skill weakness or improve it.
Are you frustrated by your students' efforts to take effective notes? Quickly and easily teach them how to take effective outline notes.
18 working memory games and strategies designed to develop a child’s memory, planning, and organization skills in a fun and effective way!
In order to stay alive, your body is always taking in oxygen! Your lungs are SO important! They remove carbon dioxide from blood, and transport oxygen and deliver it to the blood!
This 7 minute animal themed HIIT workout for kids improves emotional regulation and reduces meltdowns. Loved by OTs, teachers, and parents alike!
Last week I posted some Common Core English Language Arts ideas. I've come back for more! :) When I get to unit 3, in a few short weeks {according to my district's pacing guide} I should start to teach my kiddos narrative writing. I wanted to see how ready they were so I started it a little bit. I've started to make some things to help them understand the sequence. I also use the who, what, when, where cards I posted about before {here}. We started talking about narrative stories because we were reading them everyday! After we read a book, I would ask what happened in the beginning, middle, and end. When they mastered that, we moved on to first, next, then, last. Then, I told them we are going to write our own narrative! AH! Or perhaps you need these: Oh narrative writing. Why do you hate me? By the end of the year, they should be able to:Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure. *NOTE: I DID A LOT OF MODELING AND SHARED WRITING BEFORE I LET THEM GO OFF AND TRY THEMSELVES!!!! It's all about modeling! For this activity. I just read a book about a haunted house {you can do any topic} and I had my kids pretend they knocked on the door of a haunted house {sorry, I forgot to take pictures}. They drew a picture of what would happen: Then, they took what they drew and wrote one or two sentences {rough draft} to go along with the picture: Finally, they wrote a final draft after I had a mini-conference with them about their rough draft. They will finish up the "writing process" by publishing their work in the classroom! :) My kiddos did ok on this, but we were all exhausted by the end! I get exhausted by narrative writing! What do you do that WORKS for teaching narrative writing? Do you do writers workshop??? Frames by: KPM Doodles Paper Pixels
These free human ear worksheets will help you teach your kids all about the anatomy and function of the ear.
Arguably the most important things your child will learn in middle school are effective time management and organization skills. The most critical tool for building these executive functions? The right planner. Here it is.
