Happy Holidays!

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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!

Photo Book

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Handwriting Without Tears

Because our children are doing so well, we are at a place to really be diving into some pre-k skills. With that, are the skills necessary for writing and tracing. This presented us with a wonderful opportunity to learn from our OT about a great program called Handwriting Without Tears (HWT). I was somewhat familiar with from teaching in the public school, but I had never seen or tried the pre-k HWT. This program is designed to teach kids letters and is the precursor to writing.







Part of the pre-k program is these wooden pieces that can be manipulated to make every letter of the alphabet.

At first the child is given only the pieces necessary to make the letter and in the correct order that you would write.

The children then make the letters. This gets them ready for skills like tracing and writing.










All of the HWT manipulatives can be purchased to have your own set, but how's this for an easy AND inexpensive trick?!?

Card stock! The card stock is stronger than regular paper.

We are looking forward to more writing skills and posts on how our children are progressing! Thanks to our OT for taking the time to show us and the kids all about Handwriting Without Tears!

Team Teaching or Co-treating

For those of you in the educational world, you are familiar with team teaching; those of you in the therapy world are familiar with co-treating. Essentially what we are doing everyday in Bridges is exactly that! It's one big long day of team teaching and co-treating. Today was such a wonderful example of that! Currently, we are running summer camps- a little different than our school year Bridges program. We did this to accomodate the need for school age children to participate in our program. We run 2 week long mini units. This session is zoo animals (I'll be posting some resources we used later).

Our amazing speech pathologist knew what the unit was and together we were able to adapt an activity for the whole group. She was treating a boy who's speech goals include following directions, turn taking, giving directions, and asking questions. Today we played the game Uno Moo , which is the cuttest game! It fit into our animals theme, the whole group was able to participate, AND she addressed a wide variety of speech goals.

The open communication made the activity so easy and took little (if any really) planning to make it all work in our day. I have been lucky enough to see several examples of this from our PTs and OT, but I had it on my mind today that I wanted to write about this and it just appeared so perfectly today!

Working with others

Part of the transdisciplinary approach is working with others. I am working side by side with physical, occupational, and speech therapists. I need to know what my student's goals are in every domain of development. It's a lot to keep up on, but well worth it in the end. This is a video of one of my students. She and her family have taken full advantage of the Bridges program and what we offer at The Therapy Place.

Emma's Video

Keeping schedules straight about who sees who and when and for how long can be a crazy process! I'll be posting some organizational tips-- which have taken almost a full school year to evolve! But, bear in mind that it is for the children and not whatever it easiest for you as the teacher. This video speaks more on our approach than my words could ever do!

Happy 4th of July!!

Bridges is blogging

A small introduction:

My name is Erin and I am an early childhood special education teacher. I work at a wonderful place, called The Therapy Place, a pediatric therapeutic center! I run a program called Bridges. Bridges is a holistic transdisciplinary program for children with special needs. We use the skills, knowledge, and expertise of physical, occupational, and speech therapists, as well as special educators, parents, early interventionists, and any other professionals in the child's life. It's called transdisciplinary because we all work together as a team to decide the child's plan of care.

Here's basically how it works:

Research has shown that this is the best model for early intervention and education, however most people, places, and institutions can't achieve it. Why can we? Simple really, we have people working for the children that love their job and love these kids! It is truly a blessing to work with people who want every child to succeed in every aspect of their life.

I use a preschool curriculum called Play & Learn and I tailor activities from other educators, blogs, and I can't even begin to say how many activities I've gotten off of pinterest!

There are not many blogs out there dedicated to early childhood special education, and I hope to fill some that void. Many special educators do not get the luxury of working with therapists everyday the whole day, and I am so lucky I have that opportunity. I hope to share with you the knowledge I have gained and continue to gain from working with such wonderful people.

On a personal note, I am in my first year of this position and it's been more amazing than I could have ever imagined.  Thank you for sharing in this journey!!!!