Happy New Year! I cannot believe another year has come and gone.  It always feels great to reevaluate where you’re at with your kids/students/clients and see if it’s time to bump things up a bit! Don’t feel discouraged if you need to review the routines of your classroom. There’s nothing wrong with using mastered work to practice rotating through groups, taking a regulation temperature and moving at a slower pace.  I decided this month would be the perfect time to use some different materials myself and teach some new concepts.  Check them out below!

Intermediate Weekly Workbooks

If you have read my other posts, you know I am such a cheerleader for the Weekly Workbooks!  For the first time I tried using the “intermediate” version-winter themed and I loved it! It was also the perfect next challenge for the little girl who I was working with it. You can do so much with these interactive workbooks and modify as needed to help with skill building.  I love how these books also give parents, teachers and therapists a look into next steps.   This specific set had some multi step directives, non-identical matching, upper & lowercase matching, negatives and color words!  Check out the short video clip to see some picture addition. Additionally, you can find the different levels below to meet your student’s needs:

Easy Matching Weekly Work Books-Winter Edition

Intermediate Matching Weekly Work Books-Winter Edition

Complex Matching Weekly Work Books-Winter Edition

Adapted Winter Books Targeting “Where”

Next up is the Winter Adapted Book Series. This series comes with three different books however the one titled, “Where are the Children Sledding?” was most appropriate for my student.  You can scaffold this book in so many ways. For example, there are about 12 pieces with children sledding.  Some are duplicates and each page is detailed to show a specific child. If you are first starting out you could pull down three choices or even make it errorless in the beginning. Think out loud by pointing out how the smaller descriptor image matches the one you are placing on the page.  Additionally, I would normally have put Velcro pieces on all three of the “where” choices so that there was no prompt of the correct answer.  If your child/student is struggling with this, it’s also important to note that they may not yet know the label of mountain, hill or backyard but just keep modeling!  You can find this series of winter books here.

Matching & Memory Games & January Bingo

Recently I found this Memory Match game at WalMart. I loved it because I turned it into a regular matching game for vocabulary.  Once we played that we showed her the concept of memory and used about half the cards.  This was of course a harder concept but a great start (not to mention learning about patience and turn taking)!  Next, we used the January Bingo. I love the monthly themed bingo games because they come with different levels.  For example, this level was identifying the object on the card and finding it on the board. The next level bumps it up a notch with descriptions of the item you need to look for! Since this was her first time playing, we simply used it 1:1 and found the items on the board as I showed her a card.  So many options!  I also love that it taught her some new winter vocabulary such as ice skates. You can find this bingo here.  I’m excited to come back and see her progress with these activities.  Happy Winter teaching!