Dressing Skills is a 24 page booklet that provides visual directions of how to: put on a shirt put on pants in standing put on pants in sitting put on a coat put on a coat with the flip method. The pictures and step by step directions are either 3″ by 5″ images or 2″ by 2″ images. Using task analysis, each dressing skill has been broken down into simple steps. Create visual sequences for the children to follow along each step of the task. Also included is a tip sheet on how to teach dressing and a small book to read entitled “I Can Dress Myself”.
Laundry skills are a multistep life skill that requires many underlying areas of development. Let's cover laundry activities!
Do you practice life skills in your SPED classroom? If you don't, you should! Let me show you how to set up life skills centers.
Do you want to work on life skills in your classroom? Are you looking for hands-on special education life skills activities that your students will love? If so, you've come to the right place. Because today, I'm sharing my top 10 life skills activities that you can do in your classroom. 1. Washing Hands One
In my very first self-contained classroom, I was lucky enough to have an instructional kitchen attached to my classroom. Instead of only utilizing that space on "Fun Fridays" for cooking, we decided to use the space to teach our students some basic functional life skills. Daily Living Skills It can never be too early to
Special education expert, Hendrix Brakefield, gives his best tips for teaching life skills education to adults with intellectual disabilities.
Community outings can help teach students in a natural environment. Grab your free printables for high school students today and start practicing...
Come take a tour of my vocation & life skills lab where students are able to work on their IEP goals and independent living skills!
Over 100 Independent Functioning and Independent Living Life Skills IEP Goals, including ADLs, food prep, shopping, functional reading, and essential life skills.
Snipping paper is an important first stage of cutting with scissors, and one that paves the way for scissor skills in kids.
Fun and creative way to encourage cutting practice for preschool and Kindergarten students.
Is this even possible? Yes! Discover the activities that Occupational Therapist use while working on cutting skills in the schools!
If a student is unable to play with toys during structured leisure time independently, play supports are a great strategy.
Who is prepping more work boxes this summer? I just love getting new ideas, especially for our older life skill students! Christina Bailey, a transition life skill teacher, offered to share a bunch of her work boxes on my blog! Thank you Christina! Christina works with transition aged students (19-26 years old) with severe cognitive and/or health impairments. Her school serves students from multiple school districts within the county who learn best in an alternative placement. Are you ready? Here they are!! Putting together (or taking apart) flashlights. Bonus points if students can get the batteries in correctly and get the light to turn on! (Motivation!!) Ice cube tray and colored pebbles with tongs. I love the fine motor aspect added here. Marker packaging. I absolutely love this task and would be a great one to buy during back to school marker sales (especially on those really cheap markers you don't really want to use in your classroom!) Erasers on pencils. This has always been one of my favorite tasks! Silverware sorting. A must for every work task station, am I right? And a super easy and cheap one to put together. Silverware rolling / packaging. I love this task as it is perfect for vocational preparation. Putting together curlers. Ribbon threading around a wire basket. I never would have thought of this task! I love using the wire basket to thread the ribbon, and bet students would have fun with this task too. Sewing kit packaging. Packaging tasks like this are great! Tea candle sort. I love this age appropriate color sorting activity. Toiletry packaging. Wouldn't it be awesome to get donations of items like this and put together kits to give out to the homeless as a classroom service project? So, there you have it! Did you get some more good ideas? Happy task box prep! If you ever have anything you want to share, feel free to email me. I love being able to share your fantastic ideas with other special education teachers like yourself!
I am always looking for new ideas to work on fine motor skills, specifically when working with adults. I tend to resort to my "old favorite" list of fine
In many ways, strong executive functioning skills are the foundation for success. These are the mental processes that help learners plan through assignments, organize materials, initiate a task, manage time well, stay focused, try new strategies when stuck, and persevere until the completion of a go
Make lesson planning easier by repeating activities. Keep reading to find out how each life skills activity is different each day.
Fun ways to work on handwriting skills : developing the fine motor skills required for good handwriting. Apps and resources to help, along with activities
Free Life Skills File Folder Activities for the independent work station in special education classrooms. Practice life skills for community integration!
Come take a tour of my vocation & life skills lab where students are able to work on their IEP goals and independent living skills!
Create a meaningful day through various activities for autistic adults. Checkout my tips and recommendations by clicking here.
Are you wondering what executive function milestones to look for in your children? We've mapped it out in our executive function skills by age post.
Are you worried that your teen isn’t ready to live on her own? Here are some life skills every teenager should know before they leave the nest.
There are various life skills or independent living skills that kids should learn while growing up. Well, in most cases I would not say "learn" like a sort of curriculum, but as parents, we can definitely help them to master these skills while they are at a young age - so they can thank us later 😉
Pinay Homeschooler is a blog that shares homeschool and afterschool activity of kids from babies to elementary level.
Life skills are essential for our survival and success. Read on for great examples of printable life skills worksheets that can teach you how to do a number of essential tasks.
Following the directions is a skill all kids must learn. Why not make it more fun with this FREE Follow the Directions Activity Pack? These printable worksheets will take them around the town, to animal habitats, through their own bodies, and more!
I am always looking for ideas to shake up my OT treatments and try to get creative with activity tolerance activities, because it is just NOT functional or
Conversations from the Classroom is a collaborative teacher blog for educators. Our teacher bloggers share tips and ideas to help and inspire others.
Having a student business has SO MANY benefits. Depending on what your product or service is, you have the opportunity to practice independence, money math, cooking, responsibility, and so much more! In this series, various guest bloggers (teachers & special educators) will share their tried and true experience of starting and running a student business […]
Mastering life skills is one of the most important things students can do. In special ed, practice at school can help those skills along!
An in-depth look at the daily living developmental milestones one should expect broken out by specific DLS skill area and age.
From developing fine motor skills, letter and number recognition, sight words, sorting, sequencing, reading, and math, these task boxes for autism tasks will help develop important life skills and beyond!
Fine motor skills activities for kids: explore fun games and everyday life activities / Child’s fine motor skills development activities
I used to cringe the first week of kindergarten when all the kids would come in their new, lace up shoes. If only I had learned the Cheerio Method of tying shoes earlier! In those first weeks of kindergarten, I knew I'd be spending lots of time tying laces on cute little sneakers, feeling trapped!
Visual Spatial Relations Age Group : 6+ Laid out in a colourful and easy-to-use format, it is addressed to special education needs teachers, occupational therapists, logopedists, parents and schoolteachers who aim to support their children in developing and strengthening their skills. It introduces a set of games and activities that build and enhance visual perceptual skills in an enjoyable and interactive way! Visual spatial awareness denotes the ability to understand spatial concepts and directions, necessary for interacting with the outside world. It also involves processing outside information and reasoning with it through visual representation in the mind. Along with quantitative and verbal ability, it plays a key role in developing expertise in learning and work settings as well as in determining orientation, laterality and directionality. People with visuospatial deficits have poor performance in sports and suffer from coordination and balance problems. They can also find it difficult to perform rhythmic activities. Furthermore, they are clumsy and tend to reverse forms and letters / syllables, including “o” and”8” or “ma” and am”. The book includes, inter alia: 135 worksheets; activities aiming at detecting elements with or without a point of reference; activities aiming at detecting letters in several types of grids and tables; activities aiming at finding the appropriate boxes for two-syllable and three-syllable words; activities requiring learners to follow their teacher’s instructions and draw letters and numbers inside squares, as well as interactive games and activities. Visual perceptual skills influence several aspects of children’s development and everyday life, ranging from (mixed) motor skills to essential life aptitudes.
It's surprises me every year how my whole classroom shifts on what they like and what they don't like to do. The last two years, not one student has touched the puzzles on my shelves. This year, it is like the hot ticket activity. I even had to buy a couple extra so there was enough to go around. I remember about three years ago my box of pattern blocks was what everyone wanted to play with. The last couple years no one seems to care for them at all. Last week a co-worker of mine bought a Circuit Maker set for his students and called me over to check it out. I was pretty sure my boys would love it as they are really into putting things together this year. I picked it up over the weekend and introduced it to the kids yesterday. I don't know who is enjoying it more, the kids or the staff (me included). It starts out pretty easy and will build as they start making more. It says ages 8 and up on the box and so far a couple of my boys were able to do it on their own. some of them needed help with the layering (which is clear on the instructions) but they were able to snap them together fine and follow the grid. I have only allowed them to each do two as I wanted everyone to get turns making them. So far we made a circuit board that turned on a light and one that made a buzzer sound! I can't wait to see what the next pages will bring!
This ADHD cheat sheet offers helpful information for individuals coping with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The sheet provides a definition of ADHD, Common Symptoms of ADHD, Strategies For Improving Focus With ADHD, Time Management Tips For ADHD, Organization Strategies For ADHD, Tips For Coping With Impulsivity, Effective Communication Skills With ADHD, and Resources For Managing ADHD.
Task boxes can be highly beneficial for special education students for several reasons: They provide structured learning by way of presenting learning materials in an organized way, they provide visual supports, repetition & practice, and skill generalization. Task boxes can also be customized to meet each individual student’s needs and IEP goals, promote independence, and […]
