I was thrilled when I saw that there was a life skills 0.5 curriculum out!  As educators and service providers we tend to focus on the academic skills. These life skill units focus on additional important functional language and generalizing concepts. Specifically, this curriculum focuses on edible vs. inedible, eat vs. drink, hot vs. cold, silverware, open vs. closed, the symbolism of red and green in the community, community signs and symbols, wet vs. dry, items that are laundered, matching shoes and socks, putting away common items, up and down, stop and go, technology symbols, and on and off). This level targets 3-6 vocabulary words per unit in the areas of meals, community signs, laundry, cleaning verbs, kitchen categories, kitchen fixtures, transportation verbs, repair tools, fasteners, and technology. So, let’s take a peek!

Workbook Curriculum

Every time I use one of the Autism Helper Curriculums, I know I am worker smarter, not harder! These curriculums are not only scaffolded, but they also fill in the gaps that are often missed when we have so much required curriculum in classrooms.  I also look at them to prepare my youngest learners in Infants and Toddlers. While not all my families are ready for this type of workbook, the concepts can absolutely be taught using real items in the homes and daycares.  Starting to use the language that you find in the life skills curriculum will only strengthen those important early learning blocks. If you have a child that is too young for actual workbook tasks, you can certainly use this as a guide to see what concepts to work on next and use real items in the home/classroom.  You can find this level curriculum here.

Leveled Matching Weekly Workbooks

Of course, when I use the curriculums with my students, I love supporting them with the weekly matching workbooks.  The activity books are engaging and have different levels of support from the easy books that have errorless learning up to intermediate and complex.  My learners love the interactive pieces.  I had one family that took objects from within their home and would bring them out when their child was on the page (for example, the page with the different fruits).  I loved this idea because it helps kids truly generalize a label of something and show that an apple can look like the one in the picture, but the one on the countertop is also an apple! If you have students that tend to zip through all the pages and take the pieces off and it feels a bit chaotic, I suggest removing all the pieces and putting them into small envelopes and only bringing out the pieces you need to complete a page.  Some kids are not interested in the books at first, so I like to model one errorless page and then move onto something else until we slowly build up to the whole book.  You can find the links to the different levels of books below.  Happy Learning!

Easy Matching Life Skills Weekly Workbooks
Intermediate Matching Life Skills Weekly Workbooks
Complex Matching Life Skills Weekly Workbooks