ModMommy ~ My Other Love ~ The Special Education Classroom

"The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom." -Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Here is a hub created just for the classroom teachers. I am posting activities, lessons, etc.

This week and the next few weeks we are learning about Winter, dressing for Winter, snow, etc.

Science, Language Development, Social Skill development, Predicting: We did a really fun activity where we used an icetray. We did an experiment where we predicted what would freeze and what would not. We drew a larger diagram of the icetray on the board and wrote down what we put in each cube. (water, cotton, goop, plastic toys, paperclip, paint, etc.) We decided whether or not each would freeze or not. We labeled them by putting a green check on the ones that we thought would freeze and a red "x" on the ones we thought would not freeze. These kids are 3 to 6 years old and they got 12 out of 16 right. I was very impressed. :) When we went back to check to see if we were right they were so excited to see the frozen/non-frozen items. I let them hold each one, even the ice cube. They were able to better understand what freezing actually means. It was great.

Responsiblity, Ownership, Language Development, Social Skill Development: The same day my assistant thought about making each child a hat to wear. she took rectangular pieces of cloth and sewed them into a hat, fringed the ends and knotted the top. They were so cute and so very proud of their hats. I'm very fortunate to have such a wonderful co-worker. She teaches the kids as much as I do. We're a great team, I think. They are going to wear their hats at school for the next few weeks and then we will send them home. They're learning about responsibility because they have to wear their hats all day long. We sing a song at the end "Jack wore his Winter hat, Winter hat, Winter hat. Jack wore his Winter hat all day long." We give them a sticker because they did in fact keep up with their own hat. They will bring it to us if it comes off so that they can get help putting it back on. They were amazing with them. I'll post pictures of how she made them soon. Very cute, cheap/free and great to teach with. We're going to make mittens next!! :) Kudos to Jennifer, she's great!

This week we learned about snow, dressing for Winter and more. We did an activity where we froze white paint in an ice tray with penguin stickers inserted into them. The kids put them on black construction paper taped onto a cookie sheet. We then let them "ice skate" with there penguins. As the paint melted the penguin's trail was left on the paper. At the end the stuck their stickers onto there frozen trail. It was so cute. We sprinkled some glitter on the wet paint. It turned out great. We were excited at the language we heard as the kids were exploring the science for freezing/thawing. Try it out, it's fun.

Jan. 29: We did a really neat activity today. We did a book called "Dressing For Winter". We took pictures of the kids in front of a mural with snowflakes. We copied the pictures 7 times and one each page we added items fhat we needed to get dressed for winter. We added shirts, long pants, socks, boots, mittens, a scarf and a hat to each picture one at a time. On the last page we put all of the clothes on the pictures. The kids added shiny snowflakes to their last page. It turned out very cute.

www.earthexplore.com/poster.html Get a free poster about night time in different countries of the world.

http://www.teachkind.org/howtoorder.asp free stuff for teachers of all age groups.

http://www.nichcy.org/ I read most of the stuff here, it's got a lot of good info. Also an e-newsletter.

 Free Deaf Education Stuff!!

There are a lot of good resources for working with Autism, Asperger's and PDD. Of course there are many other conditions that fall within the Autism spectrum. Here's a site for resources on Aspergers.

Sign Language With Toddlers-AWESOME