New Year!

We've started a new year at Bridges, and we are so excited about what is in store for the kids this year. My assistant director and I took a lot of time getting ready for this year so we actually determined to stay good an organized this year. This has not been as easy task, as we have construction going on in our classroom right now. But I figured I would share some of the ideas we are using to keep our classroom and goals organized. The first thing we had to do was figure out how to keep every child's goals organized. The children in this class have multiple developmental delays, so we are working on goals across every domain of development. We decided to take each child's goals from each discipline and write them out in easy to understand language. Then we took pictures! Lots and lots and lots of pictures of each of the children working with the therapists or teachers. We put everything in a powerpoint presentation so it has pictures of various exercises and then bullet points of what the goal is. All of the goals and pictures are in page protecters in folders for each child. I'm not going to lie, this took a long time, but has been a life-saver now! Everyday when the teachers and aides in the room work with a child, they can just take their folders and know exactly what to work on and exactly what the goals are. We also gave parents copies of their folders so they know what to work on at home. Anytime a goal is updated or a therapist has a new exercise, we get pictures and update their folders. It's been amazing! These pictures will also help us keep track of their progress since most of our children don't fit into traditional assessments. A lot of work on the forefront, but well worth it!

Happy Holidays!

Pictures Galore Christmas

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Assistive Technology and Games

There are so many ways to incorporate assistive technology! I'm sure I have only skimmed the surface of what all we can do with AT. One thing that I love about AT is that it allows children to participate in an activity where otherwise they couldn't or an adult would have to make the choices for them. We have already shown you our favorite way to include AT at story time, so now what about games?!?

Here is a pretty simple device with two recorded choices: No and Yes

We have played Uno Moo a couple of times, and I'm obsessed with the game now. We played everyday during our farm unit for our summer sessions. When the non or limited verbal child is asked if they have a red or a pig they simply press yes or no! The aide or adult with them doesn't have to answer for them and they get to play the game independently! We love that!

Another game? How about Red Light Green Light! We played this during our safety unit. The kids each colored Stop and Go signes with red and green, and we played our own version called stop and go. 

 This child used her colored stop and go signs and we paired it with two individual Big Macs. We recored just the words Stop and Go on each. She got participate in the game just like everyone else!

There are so many ways to include AT into the school day and these are just a few. I look forward to having more and more ideas of how AT can help with communication, expression, and participation!

South Carolina Make and Take Music and Art Training!

As I've already said, and will probably continue to say, music is my passion. My undergraduate degree was in music education and for a long time I thought I would spend the rest of my days being a middle school band director. Fortunately, life had other plans for me. I found the special needs community and when I took my first job teaching resource room I never looked back.

One of the many benefits that have come from working at The Therapy Place is collaborating with amazing professionals who have already taught me so much in the one year that I have been working here. One of them is Dr. Carol Page who is the director of the South Carolina Assistive Technology Program. She has given so much of her time and talent to The Therapy Place and the Bridges program. When I have a vision, she helps make it a reality. She has been hugely instrumental in all of the AT (assistive technology) that we have implemented in Bridges. I am so grateful to have her expertise actively involved in the program.

Last fall, Dr. Page, my good friend and Kindermusic director, Alison Trotter, and I led a Make and Take training on incorporating music with children with special needs. The training was attended by early interventionists, occupational therapists, and teachers. We talked about how easy and inexpensive it is to incorporate music and how beneficial it is to the children. It was so much fun!

This fall, I am honored to be a part of this training again. Teaching others on the benefits of music for children with special needs continues to be personal mission of mine, and I'm so lucky to have the opportunity.

Check out this article on the Make and Take training!

Music and Assistive Technology

My love and passion is music! I love to watch these children come alive when we sing and dance and play instruments. Music helps these children on so many levels, and I will be doing a lot of posts about how we include music in our day.

We have been talking about farms and farm animals for this unit. What farm unit is complete without Old MacDonald?

We use animals cards and allow the children to make choices on which animal we will sing about. We also use these icons to help us string together a sentence structure for the song.



So much fun!


Check out this video of us singing and playing Old MacDonald!

Repeating Phrases at story time

Most of my students have limited verbal skills so we are always looking for ways to give our kids a voice. One of the most school things for young children is story time. We want the kids to be actively involved in story time just like any other child would be. One way we do this by using books with repeating phrases. We record the repeating phrase on a Big Mac, and then the kids are able to participate and read with us!  We've been having so much fun with story time since we introduced this. We usually do the same book for a week. This gives everyone a chance to hear the book numerous times. For young children the repetitive phrases are also an important predicting skill. We always want to encourage the children to vocalize the line and to do that they need to hear it a lot.

Here's a couple of our favorite repeating phrase books that we have used through out our themes!

Animals:
Peek-a-who? by Nina Laden
Click Clack Moo by Doreen Cronin
Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed by E. Christelow
One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root

Safety:
Emergency by Margret Mayo

Other:
It Looked Like Spilled Milk by C.B. Shaw

Check back for many more tips on literacy at this young age for children with and without speech delays!

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