Fun Friday- February

This month, we decided that we would do the same basic activities for several weeks.  That way the kids can learn to be more independent with each activity.  We will create a new art project and we are still deciding on the recipe.

We also still use a basic schedule for each group of students.  We got smart and made generic labels for each center (game, art, BINGO, kitchen).  This way we can use the same schedule for various themed activities.

This game is a good game to build into math.  The players spin a spinner (or you could use a dice) and you get that many cubes for your board.  It was interesting to see how challenging the task of adding 4 more to a board was for many of the students.  Several of mine just wanted to put blocks on the the square that matched the number of the one on the spinner.  They learned pretty quickly to get the amount of blocks on the spinner and add them to their board.

The visual rules of the game are below.

This is a spinner that we had in our manipulative kit.  We just added stickers to this spinner for now.  Most of the students required hand over hand instruction of the spinner for several turns.  I would gesture to the spin visual cue and then hand over hand them spinning.  Then I would try to fade the prompt by cueing with the spin visual and taping the spinner.

This is the game board that we made.

Here is this themed BINGO game.  We have the basic board to use typical BINGO chips with as well as the one that has pictures to match to the board.

Here is a recipe that we made up for a Valentine's Day slushie.  With several different special diets in our classes, cooking is always a challenge.  This is a recipe that everyone can eat and all of the kids enjoyed.  We used my Magic Bullet blender so the kids could easily put in the ingredients and each child could have an opportunity to help blend safely.

Here is a communication board that our speech therapist made to go with our cooking activity.

Here are the directions for the Valentine art activity we made this week. 

Here are the materials needed for the activity (except the crayons and glue sticks).  We try to keep some materials so the kids have to use the communication boards to ask for them.  Our speech therapist will work this station to work on each child's speech goals.

The students also incorporate in the communication board below to talk about what family members they love.

Fun Friday- Christmas

Here are the activities for our Christmas Extravaganza...

The Recipe of the Week was to make Gingerbread Ornaments. 

The craft was to make a Christmas tree and decorate it.  Here are the directions with the materials divided in a container to have easy access.

This is a game that we made up for the week.  The student will roll the die and see how many decorations for the tree they need to get.  The first person to fill up the tree is the winner.

We made the die out of a toy block and put both numbers and dots on the cube.  This way students can work on identifying numbers as well as counting small number sets.

Here is the Bingo game of the week.  It is very similar to the Kwanzaa bingo game from last week.

Fun Friday- Happy Kwanzaa & Las Posadas

Our next Holiday Extravaganzaa was to celebrate Kwanzaa and Las Posadas. 

Below are the schedules we made for the activities of the day.

Below is the recipe directions for fruit kabobs.  The students created patterns with fruit on the skewers.  All of our students enjoyed the fruit kabobs with their lunch later in the day.

Here are the directions for making a Kwanzaa mat. We simplified the mat to glue pieces of paper down instead of actually weaving the paper.

We color coded dots on the paper so the kids could match the paper to the dots.  This gives them a visual cue to help them be independent with the activity.

The Kwanzaa BINGO boards were made using Boardmaker software.  We have plain boards that students use chips to mark and one set that is velcroed to be a picture matching game.

Earlier in the week, each student made a pinata.  We blew up ballons and used newspaper strips and a flour/water mixture to make paper maiche pinatas.  We then let the kids paint their pinatas however they wanted.

Below are the directions for the pinata station.

We used a clothes hanging rack (that had previously been used as a vocational center) to tie the pinatas to for the breaking process.  You can see the waiting chairs for the kids to wait their turn.  I tied the balloons to the rack and pretty much endded up holding the balloons so the kids could get a good hit in.  We used a plastic bat as the stick to break the pinata.

Once the pinata broke, we had the students gather the candy and sort it into the container below.  This way, the students used sorting skills and the adults were able to control the candy until lunch time.

This was another successful day!  The kids are really starting to understand the centers as we teach they how to rotate to various activities.  Overall SUCCESS!

Fun Friday- Hanukkah Extravaganza

Though this is a little delayed... here are some winter holiday updates...

Both the K-2 teacher and I (3-5) decided to start trying Fun Friday's with both of our classes together.  This involved 15 children with autism and 7 adults.  We split the kids into groups based on who will work well together or those that at least compliment the others' behaviors.  Each group of children (except one group that needs minmal adult assistance) gets an adult (4 groups) and each center has an adult.  Therefore, each time an activity is going on, there are 2 adults with each group (except for the one group of children.  These days can be tiring, but the kids love them and they have been successful for 4 different days at this point.  Below are pictures of the different centers we used.

These are the schedules that we used to help the children transition to each center.  Each group used a schedule and checked it off as we went.

BINGO- We post a list of how many times they will play the game. Here, they will play 3 times and then get to go make a choice.

 

Here is one of the BINGO boards that we used.  I believe that I found it as www.speakingofspeech.com.

This board is designed for a student that gets handed a card to match to the board.

Here is a visual of the rules.

Here is a visual of the directions for the art project.

We set up the materials left to right.  This helps organize it for the children and helps them be more independent.

Here is a recipe for Latkes that came with our Unique Learning System Curriculum.

The kids all LOVED the latkes we made on this day.  They got to shred the potatoes by holding onto a fork that was put in the potato (to help prevent any shredding injuries).  They got to crack eggs and mix the mixture.  The adult with the group did the actual cooking of the latkes.