We all want our students to have better communication skills! So, of course they need to be able to build sentences.  Have you worked with preschoolers who are limited to just single words? They can have a difficult time communicating their wants and ideas. Often, they become frustrated, understandably.

Older students with autism also face communicative frustrations frequently. We add to this problem if all we do is teach them requesting skills. There are so many other communication needs! Don’t assume that students do not have ideas they wish to express just because they show the stereotypies of autism, such as hand flapping, rocking, or echolalia. They also need to learn to build sentences.

Use visuals for building  sentences.

Using visuals to build sentences is a great strategy! It works for students with a variety of language difficulties:

1. hard to understand speech, especially those with apraxia:  These kids benefit from the visual modeling of picture cues. Since the sentence formulation is taken care of, it is easier for them to focus only on the motor aspects of sound production.
2. limited sentence length: Picture sentences model longer utterances without the fleeting time aspect of verbal models. You can visually model the complete sentence while having your students only produce the appropriate words for their level.
3. autism: Whether your students are nonverbal or minimally verbal, visual processing is usually a stronger modality than auditory processing.  Since many people with autism think in pictures, according to Dr. Temple Grandin, we should be modeling sentences using pictures.
4. learning English as a second language: Pictures make the meaning clear so kids can concentrate on learning the new words and building sentences with them.
5. limited attention spans: pictures engage students to help them remain focused.

But how do you find the time to get all of those pictures for building sentence skills?

It is much easier now to find picture supports by going online than it used to be, but it is still time consuming. I spent many, many hours over the years collecting physical pictures for my themes. Now I spend hours collecting digital pictures to make it esier for you to use them. That is how strongly I feel about using visuals!

Sentence Building Picture Activities

These sets build sentences using functional vocabulary. The different parts of speech have color coded borders that coordinate with Proloquo and many other AAC systems. There is color coding on the game cards, as well, to make sequencing the words to build sentences easier.

Not only that, but it is easier to differentiate instruction according to student needs:

1. Use the game board that is most appropriate for each student. Three different levels of visual cues are provided.
2. Prefill the game cards with the parts of speech you want to model, but the students aren’t yet ready to build into the sentence. Start with filling in just 1 word and build up to making complete Noun-Verb-Object sentences.
3. Sort objects and verbs with the sorting mat.
4. Check word association skills with the suggested activities and ready to go data sheet.
5. Play sentence spinner games with 2 choices of levels.
6. Complete the cut and glue picture sentece worksheets. Choose the level appropriate for your students- 2 or 4 sentences per page.
7. Download the FREE book craft activity for take home carryover!

Tips for Differentiating Instruction in Sentence Building Activities

Do you have students with problems manipulating pictures? Here’s a tip, shown in the picture above. Place the small pictures on top of milk bottle caps to make it easier for your students to maneuver. When they place the small picture in the correct place on the game board, you can replace it with the color picture.

And, to make the game more difficult, just turn the bottle caps upside down so they can’t see the picture. They’ll get practice deciding if that sentence part belongs on their board. Maybe they will switch out the sentence while playing!

Each Sentence Building set includes 6 different activities! You work on listening skills or asking and answering questions for student interactions. Provide more practice and helps students generalize their sentence building skills.

Each packet has pictured functional vocabulary for nouns and verbs needed to build sentences. Topics are based on familiar themes, such as seasons, holidays, and family/school outings to help with practical use.

And best of all, you don’t need to spend the time hunting down picture supports! I did the work for you.

Want more help with using visuals? Check out this great series of posts at PrAACtical AAC.

Multiple Meaning Vocabulary Words Build Language Skills

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Yes, there are some surprising skills that you can teach along with vocabulary! You just have to choose your words carefully. Have you thought about using multiple-meaning words in your speech therapy sessions?

Don’t spend waste your time trying to keep up with a weekly vocabulary list used in the classroom when you only have about an hour a week with a student. Instead, build some learning skills while you are teaching new vocabulary.

Research shows that building deeper word knowledge helps students retain and use new vocabulary words. Incorporating language skills and word associations into your vocabulary work will help with this. And if you only have a few sessions weekly, you are drilling classroom vocabulary, not teaching strategies or deep knowledge.

Choose Vocabulary Carefully

Do you have students who can parrot a list of meanings but don’t understand the vocabulary in context? This is exactly what got me started developing multiple-meaning sets that incorporate multiple skills. Using the same vocabulary in different contexts, with varied language skills, did the trick for my SPED students who couldn’t retain word meanings. Try the FREE Multiple Meanings mini unit to see for yourself when you sign up for the LLL emails below.

Try out the BOOM Card free previews and take a look at all of the skills in the printable task cards and worksheet sets.

Get some fun activity ideas for your speech therapy sessions. Then check out this post for more free digital teaching ideas!

Thanksgiving is a great time to try out these quick, inexpensive tips for teaching the concepts old and new! Felt is fun for students and you since it is inexpensive, quick to prepare, and can be used from year to year. Best of all, it lets you reinforce short-lived classroom vocabulary while teaching concepts that can be used over and over again. Check out these 3 inexpensive quick tips for teaching old and new!

1. Get your felt board ready.

Felt boards are one of my favorite kinds of activities for young students since they learn best when manipulating objects and moving around. And it is inexpensive and quick to set up! You don’t even need to buy an expensive felt board to use felt activities. Just go to your local fabric store and buy a large piece of felt in your favorite color.

• If you have a corkboard on your wall, tack it there.
• If you don’t, get a dowel or yardstick at any craft or hardware store. Roll the edge of the felt piece over it and glue the ends together. Make sure that the ends of the dowel stick out far enough past the edges of the felt that you can tie the ends of a cord on each side. Yarn and string will also work.
• Attach it to your wall with a nail, to a magnetic board using a strong magnetic clip that can grip the cord, to the hooks that are above the old fashioned blackboards, over a doorknob, or wherever you can!

Here is a photo of a fun wall hanging that my daughter-in-law gave to me. See that the dowel goes through the seam and has a cord tied on? Presto! Instant wall hanging!

2. Make your felt sets for old and new items.

While felt sets for sale are adorable, don’t despair if you can’t afford them! And you don’t have to painstakingly cut out pieces of felt, either.

Just take any unlaminated pictures you want to use and glue them to pieces of felt with regular school glue. Spread it thin, let it dry and you have an instant felt set!

3. Try these fun felt activities with movement built in!

1. Have the students label the pictures they want to place on the felt board. Use additional pictures, like the old and new houses in the photo, and you have a sorting task for old and new.
2. Put all of the felt pictures on the board. Ask a question and let a student go find the answer.
3. Give some clues about one of the pictures and see if the student can find which one you are talking about- an instant activity for building inference skills!
4. Glue the pictures onto square pieces of felt, make duplicates, and you have a movement memory game.
5. Turn one set of pictures over so that the photo doesn’t show. Let your students take turns throwing a beanbag at the felt wall so that a picture falls down. If they use their target skill correctly, they get to keep the picture. When all of the pictures have fallen, the student with the most collected is the winner.
6. Bring the same old and new pictures back in the winter to review. Use a soft fabric snowball for the same activity and you have indoor snowball play!
7. Make your life even easier and check out these great Thanksgiving activities at varying levels!

Did you have so much fun that you want to do it again? Then check out the Halloween and Christmas ideas for using felt!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Do you know an SLP who doesn’t want quick and easy tips to save time for years to come? Of course not! So be sure to save this post to your tips board!

Tip 1: Add a little fun with holiday shapes.

Remember that the holiday vocabulary is not the focus of the session. Your students’ goals are.  Since holiday words only get used yearly, it isn’t worth therapy time to teach those. But nothing says that we can’t incorporate holiday themes into our speech therapy goals. Then your students continue to make progress on their specific IEP goals in a festive way.

Tip 2: A bit of time makes an activity to use for years.

Cut out basic holiday shapes in different colors and laminate them. All you need is some holiday-themed colors of construction paper and a pair of scissors. There are so many free printables online. Just choose your favorite, trace, and start cutting. Of course, if you have access to a die-cut machine, it is even easier!

Try these holiday shapes:

• school buses for September.
• witch’s hats or ghosts for October
• turkeys or Pilgrim hats for November.
• trees, presents, or dreidels for December.
• snowmen for January.
• groundhogs or President’s silhouettes for February.
• shamrocks for March.
• bunnies or rain clouds for April.
• flowers for May.
• graduation hats for June.

You will have a school year’s worth of back up activities in no time!

Tip 3: Individualize holiday shapes for mixed groups.

Individualize the holiday shapes by adding pictures with double-sided sticky tape.  If you don’t have double-sided, a rolled-up piece of tape will do! One easy way is to take the pictures from a worksheet you are using.  Roughly cut them out and tape them on the shape. Use the pictures in a game to get additional practice. Then send the worksheet home for carryover!

You can also use a dry erase marker to quickly write on the words or phrases if your students read. Or let them say the words 5 times correctly and then write it themselves!

Tip 4: How to make quick changes between sessions.

Changing your holiday shapes is fast and easy!

If you don’t feel like making enough holiday shapes for all of your groups, just keep a full-page laminated sheet nearby. It is fast and easy to swap out a set of articulation pictures for a set of action pictures, for example!

Another idea is to just write numbers on the back of the holiday shapes. Students can request or turn over a shape and then give the answer for the corresponding number on a worksheet. Even little changes like this can make a worksheet more fun!

Tip 5: Change how you use holiday shapes and address many goals.

There are so many ways to use your holiday shapes! Make mixed groups easy by turning the picture side down and giving each student a set.  Combine varied sets of holiday theme shapes to elicit descriptive words:

• the color item
• small or large
• old versus new, clean versus dirty
• the functions of the various shapes

Place the different colored shapes in a square array to have students request using positional words, such as on the:

• bottom/middle/top
• left/center/right
• above/below the color item

Write question words on one side and a picture or word on the other. Students are only allowed to keep the card if they correctly ask and answer a question using both words.

Have students answer a question or say their articulation practice words before choosing a card.  Add a little surprise like one of these to the backs of the cards:

• No homework today!
• You earned an extra point!
• Bonus minute for free time!

Then even your older elementary students will be excited to play.

The sky is the limit with how these can be used! Just remember to erase or take off the tape before storing them for next year!

What better time of year to use fun activities for language and social skills for emotions than at Halloween? It’s easy when you know how to and it doesn’t have to be expensive if you use paper and felt. 

Scary is the first emotion we think of being connected to Halloween, but there are so many different feelings that kids experience on this holiday. And jack o’ lantern faces give us the perfect opportunity to build our students’ vocabulary for emotions1 

How to Make A Quick and Easy Felt Bag

Felt is such an inexpensive, versatile way to make your own therapy materials!  With every color available, you can make simple felt shapes to match every holiday and season. All it takes is the right color felt, a marker, a simple shape you can draw, and glue to keep it closed. You can even make this craft with students during your session!

Whether you choose to make a pumpkin bag, a ghost puppet, or some other Halloween shape, be sure to add a face with emotion. You don’t even have to be able to draw since there are so many Jack O’Lantern faces online to trace.

• Get a piece of felt that is double the size of the shape that you are using for your pattern.
• Draw the shape on one side of the felt with the permanent marker, fold the felt in half and cut around it. Ghosts and pumpkins are easy to draw!
• Glue the sides together and voila! You have a cute little felt bag.
• In a hurry? Staple the sides together and put some tape over the staple backs if you have concerns about pricking little fingers.

Hide It! Language Activities

Young students love to find hidden things! Try hiding small pumpkins with varied emotions faces inside a big felt pumpkin bag. Elicit a targeted speech or language production and then let students pick a pumpkin with feelings out of the bag. Find out what makes them feel that way!

A great thing about using felt is that students have something safe to hold onto and play with while waiting for their turn!

The language you can model includes:

• spatial concepts (in, out, on)
• emotion vocabulary (happy, sad, scary, angry)
• descriptive words (scary, spooky, funny, silly, safe)
• colors
• sizes

Young students will have fun just playing the game, but you can make duplicates of the emotion pumpkins to play and see who gets the most matches.

For a fun cleanup activity that works on social skills, try telling a Halloween scenario that evokes a feeling. Have your students decide what that emotion could be and then put that pumpkin back inside the bag. Continue until the small pumpkins are all put away. 

Dealing with Sensory Issues

When there are no issues of tactile defensiveness, young students love to find whatever is hiding inside the bag. It’s kind of like getting a present!

But for kids with sensory issues, you may find it helpful to put the pieces you want to place inside the bag and the bag itself on the table. Felt is a soft, familiar material and many kids will explore it on their own when they are totally in charge of the pace.

For kids who still have issues, try these ideas after exploration time.

• Play a cleanup game where you name or describe one of the felt figures and see if they can find it.
• Let the child pick it up and put it inside.
• If this is still too much, place them far apart and see if the child will look at the one you named.
• Make a mini version that you leave on the table in front of them. Just let them peek or participate in whatever way they can handle until the activity is familiar.
• Hide a few little pieces of a food reinforcer amidst the felt pieces to reinforce exploring.

Listening Activities

Use your felt bag for a fun listening activity that reinforces your work from that session:

1. Describe one of the picture cards you used in that session.
2. See who can find the correct picture first to put in the bag.
3. Therapy and clean up all in one!

Talk About It! Language Activities

1. Place pictures of some work that needs review along with a Halloween photo in the bag.  This is a great 5-minute warm-up to see what was retained from the previous sessions.
2. Students take turns choosing a picture from the bag and telling about it.
3. When the Halloween photo is chosen, discuss the picture, targeting each student’s current goal.
4. Have copies of the picture already made to glue into the student’s communication book to talk about at home. Homework is taken care of!

Play with it! Help for transition problems.

First, place a few small Halloween toys inside the bag for your students to play with until their next turn.  This is a great strategy for students who have difficulty waiting.  This tactic also helps when you need a few minutes to concentrate on one of the other students in the group.

The photo shows some examples of the types of toys that could be used.  Don’t put them all in the bag at once.  Add a new toy, maybe every other session or so. Doing this activity at the beginning of each session can be helpful for students who have problems making transitions. Knowing that they will start with a familiar, enjoyable activity can help them leave what they are doing to go to speech.

Then, when your little ones get the language you’ve been modeling or start losing interest in the toy you have been using, put in a new toy for them to explore. After they have explored the new toy, bring out some similar or familiar ones for a little describing and comparing/contrasting.  

Describe It! Language Activities

Did you notice in the picture that there’s a variety of colors and textures in the group of toys? You’ll also notice there are two felt ghosts there. One opens to be a puppet and the other is flat. One is small and one is big.  One is fuzzy (felt) and one is smooth (fabric.) One is happy and one is sad. Choosing items with contrast lends itself to describing activities.

First, fly the ghosts around in a fun way so your students want to request it. When they ask for a ghost, elicit some descriptive language by using sabotage. Watch where the student is looking so that  you are sure to give the unwanted one:

“Oh, you didn’t want the little one? Maybe you wanted the BIG ghost. Tell me, which one do you want?” Just like that, you’ve set up a situation for describing!

It’s easy to make felt into puppets. Just cut out a duplicate of the drawing you made for the bag, but close the top and leave an opening on the bottom that your hand will fit into!

Puppets are a wonderful therapy tool for children! They let you adopt another voice, practice basic social skills like giving and taking a toy, or interact in a way that feels less threatening to young children.

Sometimes young students who won’t talk to a speech therapist will speak to the puppet with no problems at all.  Puppets even give us the freedom to be a little silly in a way that might be uncomfortable otherwise (especially with a parent observing!)

Apply It to Social Skills Scenarios!

Practice with identifying and labeling vocabulary is only the beginning of vocabulary building. Young kids need to actually apply the vocabulary in real-life situations if the words are going to be useful to them. So, when choosing vocabulary words to teach, be sure to think about how and why those words are important for your students to learn.

Vocabulary for emotions is one of the building blocks for communication in social situations. So, students need some practice in identifying feelings in typical situations. It’s also your chance to sneak in some classroom problem situations that their teacher has spoken to you about. And it is easy to do!

After you are done playing, lay the facial expressions on the table. It doesn’t matter whether they are ghosts, witches, bats, or pumpkins.  They can be felt or paper, laminated or not. Then give a short and sweet scenario that is familiar to your students.

For example, “Liam shared his crayons with Eva. How do you think Eva felt?” The student finds and labels the facial expression and it goes back in your bag. As simple as that! And you are both applying the vocabulary and working on basic perspective-taking skills!

More Social Skills Activities for Feelings

Maybe crafting isn’t your thing. Or you might need more detailed emotion images and problem-solving activities to support social skills learning. That’s okay! I have a solution for you.

This pumpkin-themed emotions vocabulary set can be used all fall to build social skills for emotions, facial expressions, and problem-solving. The varied levels, with pictures, words, and short scenarios, make working with mixed-level groups easier. As always, my sets give you lots of activities to practice skills in mixed groups or build skills to a higher level. Check it out!

What better way to have fun learning social routines for Halloween than with a little trick-or-treat play? Play is the best way to do therapy with little ones! Kids pay better attention and learn more easily when they are having fun. So if you work with preschoolers and early elementary students, try out these ideas!

Why Practice the Halloween Routine?

Halloween has become a big holiday in the US and can be a bit scary for young children or autistic kids. It is worthwhile to use your therapy time practicing Halloween routines to help familiarize them with not only the day itself but all of the decorations they will see in stores and houses. Why?

• Kids who don’t have the language needed will have a harder time participating with their peers.
• Learning the routine and playing with (a little bit scary) Halloween figures can reduce fear for kids who get frightened by Halloween.
• There are so many repetitive phrases and short sentences that you can use to build language skills:

  “Knock on the door.” “Open the door. ” “Trick or treat.”  “Thank you.” “Share it with me.” “Put it in.” “Take it out.” “Put it on.” “Take it off.”

• Kids with motor speech problems benefit from the sing-song repetition of “Trick or Treat.”  They can practice the vowel change combination even if they can’t get the whole word.

• For articulation errors, there are so many costumes and candies that you are sure to find something to get them practicing their target sound. Some ideas for the common L, R, S errors that could come up in conversations at Halloween are:
  • I’ll wear a ____ costume.                               
  • I like that candy.
  • I see a ____.                                                   
  • I’d really like to get ______.
  • Trick or Treat!                                                 
  • See what I got!
  • I’d like to get more ___.                                 
  • So where should we go next?

     

How to Practice the Halloween Routine

Books and play, of course! Combined is even better. Keeping the language simple, in a repetitive routine, lets kids get lots of practice.

Shoebox Play

Shoeboxes are so useful for making therapy materials! Glue on some construction paper, draw a door and some pumpkins, or just decorate it with some Halloween stickers. Then, punch a hole to tie some string into so you can open and close the door easily. Look what a fun Halloween activity you have!

Play using shoebox props imitates the real routine and can easily support symbol use/exchange as well as verbal language, eliciting the repetitive phrases listed above. Start by having a new friend inside the box every day. Getting excited about what new toy was inside can help preschoolers with transition problems do it easily. An added bonus for starting your sessions with play!

Introduce the name of the costume, and do the trick or treat routine before moving on to the ‘work’ you need to accomplish that session. After a book and some activities that reinforce the skills being worked on, the kids can have a little free play with the toys at the end of the session.  Toys, where the costumes come on and off, are certainly worth keeping your eyes peeled for when you are at garage sales!

Toys

Be on the lookout for toy sets that let kids easily dress play figures. You may recognize the  Halloween set in the photo from your childhood days. It is a great example of easily putting on and taking off Halloween costumes.

If you can’t find these at a garage sale, don’t worry!  Kids like to pretend, so you can use any toy kids to play with. Just cut out pictures of Halloween costumes in the approximate size and put them on the figures with poster putty. It shouldn’t do any damage as long as you take it off before storing it.

Of course, don’t use poster putty with kids who still put objects in their mouths!

iPad Play

Limiting screen time is recommended for children, so make your iPad time a valuable learning experience! While particularly useful for teletherapy since you can still practice the trick-or-treat routine, it won’t be 3D!  If you are working with a child in person, be sure to combine hands-on activities along with iPad use, especially if your student has autism.

Using a paper duplicate of the onscreen activity can be a good way to help autistic children start to interact in real life. Since they are already familiar with the activity, the new skill is playing it with a person.

Just take screenshots or photos of the activity steps that require interaction.  Work on identifying and practicing each of these steps outside of the routine until your student can do it. Then put it back into the shortened routine. Build up until they can do the entire activity in an interaction with you. Gaining access to the iPad version is their reinforcement for playing the routine in person.

If you love this idea and want to have it ready to go, check out the ready-made version at my TPT store! You can print it and play it! The interactive version plays on PowerPoint and iPad. It even includes real knocking sounds and children’s voices saying, “Trick or Treat!”

Another option is to make your own Trick or Treat book! Just join the LLL email list to download the freebie.

Make your students’ screen time effective! Incorporate language skills for real-life routines in their screen time play to help generalization. Try it this Halloween!

Did you know that students who don’t keep expanding their vocabulary over the summer come back to school in the fall lagging behind their peers who continued learning? Here are 5 no-cost tips to help stop summer time lag.

Parents, what you do with your children at home is so important! You CAN help your kids to be better prepared for school each and every year. These ideas are NO COST, but they do take a bit of time. And you don’t even need to leave your home for most of these!

5 tips to help stop that summertime lag! 

1. Vocabulary

Choose a word of the week and give a thumbs up for every time one of your kids uses that word in a sentence. The winner earns an easy prize:

• Stay up 15 minutes later (or in bed later in the morning)
• Choose the next cereal to be bought
• 1 chore to be shared by the other kids one time
• A star next to their name on a piece of paper on the fridge

   

2. Play word games

Take turns:

• naming something in a category that starts or ends with a letter
• describing something until someone guesses it
• going through the alphabet to name an item you would find in a place

Reading is the most important thing you can do! If your kids totally resist trips to the library, try these ideas:

• Try a manga (comic strip pictures) book.
• Read the comics together if you get a paper or have computer access.
• Make something your family loves to eat and have your kids read the recipe to you.
• Have your kids read the labels at the store to find out how much sugar or salt are in the food.
• Find a show or movie with subtitles that you have free access to and take turns reading the script.

For school practice, the stories have to have a beginning, middle, and end that are connected by a main idea.

Try these ideas:

• At a shared meal, tell something about your day.
• Share a story about something that you will always remember.
• Talk about the worst time you ever had at (place.)
• Tell about a time you got in trouble when you were little.
• Talk about the last episode of their favorite tv show. Does it make sense even if you haven’t seen the show?
• Share a wish/hope story, like:
  • If I could travel anywhere…
  • If I won a shopping spree at my favorite store…
  • If I invented a _____…
  • If I had a personal robot…

5. Talk!

Remember, your kids are NEVER too little to talk to. That is how they learn!

Whatever you do, just keep on talking!

Have a great summer!

Therapy doesn’t always have to be expensive if you creatively recycle and reuse materials you already own or have around the house! It also helps if you have garage sales in your neighborhood. And if you know people that have kids, don’t be afraid to ask them to let you go through their kids’ toys and books before they get rid of them! Here are 9 great tips for recycling, reusing, adapting, and organizing materials you already own!

Adapting items you already own does take a little time. But building up a supply of activities around a theme makes working with mixed-level groups so much easier! Being able to mix and match the materials for different groups’ needs also keeps you from having to do the exact same activity all day long.

These examples have a pet theme. So fun to do at any time of the year!

Tip 1: ORGANIZE So You Can Find It

Buy some inexpensive boxes to keep the toys and books you’ve found for each theme all in one place. Add to the theme as you find more inexpensive items. You will need a box once you start recycling household items.

Tip 2: Adapt Some PUZZLES!

If you have students with low-level skills or minimal language, puzzles that have separate pieces are worth spending some money on.

Take photos of each puzzle piece. Make symbols from them for your nonverbal students to request with, or use them on an adapted communication pointing board for expanding language skills.

Students can:

• Request the pet they want to place. (labeling)
• Find the pet that makes the sound. (auditory skills)
• Find the pet who swims, flies, etc.  (action vocabulary)
• Find the pet who eats carrots, wears a collar, etc. (word association skills)
• Request a black pet, a flying pet, etc. (describing)
• Use the adapted communication pointing board to model and expand language skills.

Tip 3: Many BOOKS To Read and Adapt

Find varied books on that theme with different levels and great pictures. This will let you build literacy skills while choosing the book that is easiest to elicit the specific language each group is working on.

Tip 4: Add Symbols for ADAPTED BOOKS

Taping symbols over the book text to adapt it to be a simple repetitive book is simple to do. Just adapt the size of the symbols so that the original text is covered and use a wide roll of clear tape that extends past the paper to hold it firmly in place. The book in the photo is still in good shape after 20+ years. Don’t use school tape, though, as it will yellow and peel.

Tip 5: Add RECYCLED MATERIALS to BOOKS To Build SYMBOLIC PLAY!

The book in the photo has repetitive text for what the pets eat. So that becomes the theme for interactive play using supplies you probably already own.  The problem was how to keep preschoolers from mouthing the pet foods yet still make play realistic?

Use craft glue to put small pieces of the foods at the bottom of empty, clean plastic fruit cups. It dries clear, keeping the pieces from falling out and kids from trying to eat them.

After each page, students put the toy animal in the matching food cup to ‘feed’ them. It makes reading fun and brings the language to life!

Tip 6: Combine Books, Recycled Materials, Adapted Worksheets, and Toys.

Having many items in the same theme to mix and match is so useful!

• Therapy stays interesting.
• There are lots of opportunities to label and use or expand language skills.
• Combining items in different ways aids generalization.
• Building skills with different play combinations helps students to develop symbolic play.

Tip 7: REUSE YOUR SHOEBOXES

(Honestly, I am not a shoe shopaholic but little kids grow into new sizes quickly!)

Admittedly, it can be a pain to cut through shoeboxes, but they offer such inexpensive ways to incorporate hands-on fun with lots of language!

After warming up by labeling the pets with the puzzle, you can have some pretend play!

“The animals are inside, but they are hungry. Let’s take them out.”

 “Who wants to eat first?”

“I think I hear “meow.” What is it?

Let’s open the door!”

You can emphasize concepts, sentence structure, question words, auditory skills, you name it!

Students who are minimally verbal can respond using the pet symbols you made by taking photos of the puzzle pieces, or the puzzle pieces themselves. A communication board will let you visually model the language being used and expand your students’ expressive skills.

Tip 8: TURN WORKSHEETS INTO PLAY!

Worksheets with pictures are great to turn into hands-on activities.

In the photo, you can see examples of:

• Sticker activities that are laminated and turned into a pet shop game. One set is an enlarged version so that the students had to specify the big/little pet.
• Shape matching pages turned into a game.
• Hidden picture pages put into a page protector to make a matching activity using pet symbols. The pictures of the hidden animal were colored in this set for a student who was just beginning to visually discriminate.
• A trading card plastic page that was adapted with symbols for students to match the associated pet and say the sentence.

Tip 9: USE SUPPLIES YOUR SCHOOL OFFERS!

My school had Ellison cutters and construction paper available. Adding pet photos on the back before laminating made a simple game. Students requested the color cat or dog and then turned it over.

The visual support helped the minimally verbal students form a sentence while the more verbal students used correct grammar in their productions.

As always, TpT can save you so much time with high-quality materials!

Check out my pet themed activity bundle and add your own toys for some interactive fun!

Enjoy!

How in the world do you teach children to accept ‘no’?  Give choices! While this is not always an easy task, these tips for how to help children accept ‘no’ by making choices will surely help if you use them!

My friend, Lisette, over at Speech Sprouts, asked what I did to help kids understand and accept ‘no’. It takes a lot of work and very few 2-3 year-olds will easily accept ‘no’ for something they truly want! But there are some strategies you can use to help kids start moving along the path to accepting ‘no.’

Avoid yes or no questions! Give choices instead.

Be careful how you word your questions! Asking a child, “Do you want A ?” implies that you are asking them for their wishes. This leaves it open for them to say, “No, I want B.” when B is not an option. Then you have to say “No.”

Instead, try “Today we have A or B. Which one do you want?” While some kids will then reply, “I want C!” this leaves it open for you to say, “I like C, too, but today we get to pick from A or B.”  You notice that this response did not include the ‘N’ word! Sometimes just hearing that word sets some kids off!

To make it even more visual, hold up the two items that the child can choose from. If your kid says something different, you can just answer, “I have this and this. Which one do you want?”

Choice boards help kids learn to handle ‘no.’

To do this visually, use a choice board!

Visuals are important to help kids see the choices, even for verbal kids. They don’t have to be fancy, just a ‘no’ item and 2 pictured choices.

• Place the ‘no’ symbol on the item that isn’t a choice. This item can even be the cabinet where snacks are stored.
• While they see the ‘no’ symbol, they also see that there will be other choices available.
• Without the visual, they will hear the ‘no’ and can have a meltdown before processing the other choices.

Practice accepting ‘no’ in a less emotional context first.

First, help your students understand ‘no’ (whether visually or verbally) in activities where they don’t care as much. Don’t start teaching using their favorites! Build up to hearing ‘no’ when it actually is something that the child wants.  Let them learn first that there will be other good options, even if not their #1 choice.

Note: Some students are just not able to handle ‘no’ for various reasons. But don’t make the mistake of giving in to tantrums or outbursts and give them what they want! As painful as it can be to outwait a sobbing or screaming child, you will only be making it more likely that it will continue if you give in.

Here are some tips and ideas for how to slowly build a child’s acceptance of hearing ‘no.’

5 strategies to help children with ‘NO’

Make the ‘NO’ choice a ‘no’ for someone else.

See this picture? I  never had a kid get upset when they couldn’t feed a make-believe chocolate chip cookie in shoebox play. It is great practice for realizing that sometimes there is another choice that is okay. Read more here.

These steps help build a child’s ability to gradually accept ‘no’ during increasingly meaningful situations. Save saying ‘no’ to their favorites until your child realizes that ‘no’ is not always the end of the world. But if they react with a meltdown, divert their attention and go back to the last successful step the next day. Children with autism may need these more specific steps in order to build choice-making skills for accepting ‘no.’

Note that the pictures are about cookies, but you can try this with toys, activities, or other favorites, too!

1. Make the ‘NO’ choice something that the child doesn’t like.

This is a great place to start for kids who just react to the word. Hearing ’no’ gets a bit of desensitization when it is used for something unwanted.

2. Make the ‘NO’ one of 3 equally liked choices.

Switch the cookie pictures around from day to day just to help your child see that sometimes we run out of their favorites. Keep the empty cookie bag and place a no symbol on it to show that it is not available.

Or do this to help them to learn that variety can be fine. It is easier to choose and see/hear ‘no’ when we like all of the choices.  If needed, take a break for a day and just give your child their favorite cookie.

Caveat: If your child is a picky eater, do not do this with food! Try toys instead.

3. Make the ‘NO’ be the 2nd favorite.

Making a choice to eat your favorite is easy! This step reinforces that ‘no’ is not always a bad thing. It also gets them ready for the next step.

4. Make the ‘NO’  be their favorite choice.

But be sure the 2nd favorite is a choice. It also helps to have an empty chocolate chip cookie bag available for the child to see that there are no cookies in it. This can make settling for 2nd choice easier.

5. Build sabotage into your daily routines!

Change things up on occasion:

• The crayon box can be empty, so kids have to choose from markers or colored pencils instead.
• The Lego basket is empty, so they have to choose a different building toy instead.
• The box of their favorite cereal is empty, so they have to eat something different.
• Their favorite shirt is in the washing machine, so a different choice needs to be made.

You get the idea! Learning that there are changes and new choices to be made in life is tough learning for little ones, especially anxious little ones! But by presenting it in a way where there are positive outcomes as well as negative
ones, many children can start to take it in better stride.  No miracles, just slow, hard work.

Some little ones, especially kids on the autism spectrum deal with so much anxiety and have so many specific preferences that this method won’t work on its own. Talk to your child’s team, then, to get a broader approach that is specific to your child.

How do you teach young children with autism to play? They may need some direct instruction if they do any of the following. A shoebox can help!

• Look at a toy and touch it, then walk away.
• Use a toy inappropriately.
• Play only with the same toy over and over.
• Instead of playing, just lining up the cars/figures/blocks.

These students need 3D play all the way.

Why does using a shoebox improve play for young children with autism?

Shoeboxes can help increase play skills for students with autism because they:

• can be set up so that the play steps are visually apparent. Hook and loop strips help the kids see where they need to move the figures.
• easily show when play is done since a hole at the end makes the pieces disappear.
• help keep some of the toys stable to make manipulating the other toys easier for students with OT issues.
• keep visual symbols stable in spots where they can be connected to the play skills being taught.
• Also, they store all of the pieces nicely.  Just a little benefit for you.

So you have an excuse to go buy a new pair of shoes! Just joking, but be sure to save some shoeboxes. We like for our materials to be pretty, but our students will learn just the same if you use an old shoebox like those in the photos.

How do I make a shoebox play task?

Observe your students with toys. What level of play skills do they have? The Westby Play Scale is a great tool to use.  We want our students to develop symbolic play, where one object is used on another in play.  This skill helps to develop the symbolic cognitive level that lets students realize that words and symbols stand for the real objects.

1. Start with a set of common play figures and a toy that your student has shown interest in. 
2. Watch how children with neurotypical skills use that toy. Select an easy part of that play sequence that can be shown visually.
3. Get a shoebox big enough to hold all of the important pieces on top. Make sure the box top is not busy. If so, use a solid color paper or contact paper to cover it up.
4. Line up the pieces so they will move from left to right (to reinforce pre-reading skills.)
5. Use hook and loop tape to show how the pieces will move.
6. Cut out an all done box at the end for the figures to end up in. Don’t do this step if the final goal is to have the figures placed on the toy.
7. Give it to a child or helpful friend without explaining it. Can they figure out what they are expected to do? If so, hurray to you!

How do I start teaching shoebox play skills to my young students with autism?

Just take out two figures to start: one for modeling and one for the child to move.

Go through the play step with your piece. Make sure your student is looking at what you are doing. If the child doesn’t have joint attention skills, you will need to develop those first.  No verbal language! The student is working on moving the pieces and words can be distracting.

Use the shoebox for any language that is part of the play. In the photo, you can see how a ‘wait’ sign is being used.

Push the shoebox in front of the child and see if they can do the same step. If there are multiple steps needed, you can backward chain the sequence by teaching only the last step. For example, in the photos above, you would start with one figure on top of the slide. Then all the student has to do is pick it up slightly and let it go down the slide.

Increase the number of play steps, then the number of figures as the student learns the task. Then work on fading the box out of the play routine if the child’s ability to manipulate has improved with practice.

When the child has learned to play with the figures when they are taken off the shoebox, you can vary the play. For example, have your student play with figures on a sliding board that is part of a bigger toy.

Shoebox play for the playground

Scrounge around for playground toys and figures that go with them if you don’t already have them. If you are lucky, you may find some inexpensive pieces at flea markets and yard sales!

Your main playground piece goes in the middle.  Leave room for 3-5 figures to fit on the box as if they were waiting in line to play.

After you have them placed, cut out a box at the other end for the figures to exit into. Having a visually clear ‘all done’ is SO important for working with ASD students, as it makes new tasks less overwhelming for them.

If the set up is clear visually, your students should be able to either imitate your model or move the figures with hand over hand physical prompting. This is not a following directions task!

Once your students show that they have the idea, fade-out whatever prompts you were using and then the shoebox, as well!

Are you interested in finding out about more shoebox play tips? Sign up for the LLL newsletter to receive a FREE helpful download about how to set up shoebox play for the core word ‘eat.’ 

Add in language that tells about the play skill!

When your students know the play skills, it is time to add the language. The first step is using photos of your play sequence. Photos make great adapted books and are a wonderful way to add language to play.

Then move on to different play sequences. Adapted books and file folder sentence activities are my preferred way to go!

Don’t worry about adapting the toys with hook and loop tape, since your students who with appropriate play skills can still use them. They may ask you at first why there is hook and loop on the toys, but then they ignore it.

WARNING: Don’t do what I did and store the pieces with hook and loop in a hot attic. You get a sticky mess!

Did you get the free Getting Started with Autism Guide yet? Check it out by clicking here!

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