What’s better than receiving a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day? A card from your child or student that celebrates the goodness of love and caring, of course! We’re delighted to help you spread the love on this special day. Here are some simple Valentine’s Day Coloring Cards for you to print out, color, and adorn with a message to surprise Mom, Dad, a sibling or teacher. Click here to view the cards in full and get to crafting.
We’re excited to bring you the second installment in our new series of Modified Instructions, created by Sam Blanco, BCBA. Sam’s Modified Instructions present 3-4 additional ways to play a mainstream game to make it most useful and accessible for our students with special needs. These alternative instructions break down each adapted game by:
We’re thrilled to introduce Modified Instructions for the All Around Town game, an all-time favorite around here. The game helps reinforce logic, sorting, and social skills in your student.
All Around Town is a multi-player game that engages students as they explore stores in the neighborhood and develop sorting, thinking, and organizational skills. The shops in this town are just like the ones you have visited in your neighborhood! As you move around the game board, you’ll visit the grocery store, furniture store, book store, clothing store, pet store and art supply store. Race around town and collect a card from every store and match them to your game mat. In addition to developing logic skills, players will also sharpen their social skills and awareness of community locations. Don’t forget to download our free Modified Instructions for All Around Town today!
With five games in one, the options for practicing letter names and sounds, along with memory skills and story-telling are endless in the Grandma’s Trunk Alphabet Game. This set of 26 illustrated alphabet picture cards, 26 riddle cards, and guide all packed in one trunk allows you and your student to work on auditory memory skills and listening comprehension while playing What Comes Next?, Memory, Letter Sequence Memory, Grandma’s Adventures, or Riddles. Each game involves the child pulling an alphabet card and then using a visual prompt to reach a goal, whether it’s sorting, recalling, creating a story, or solving a riddle.
This week only, take 15%* off your purchase of the Grandma’s Trunk Alphabet Game by using our promo code TRUNK3 at checkout!
The 5 games included in Grandma’s Trunk are:
*Offer is valid through Feb. 18th, 2014 at 11:59pm EST. Not compatible with any other offer. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in the code at checkout!
When beginning with a new student, there are two important things you must do. First, pair with your student, as described here. The second is that you must assess!
Unfortunately, formal assessment is frequently left out, especially when teachers are working in the home with the learner. Assessment should be the cornerstone of any choices made pertaining to the skills a learner is taught.
Reasons to Assess
Suggestions for Best Practice
Our ability to infer or to draw conclusions given partial information is a cornerstone of our reasoning process. It is important for students to be able to infer or draw conclusions in their daily lives as well as in academic settings comfortably and confidently. Guessing, implying, hinting, suggesting, supposing and reasoning are just a few of the mental processes in which we draw inference. For language students, using inference as they problem-solve will also enable them to explain how they come to their conclusions. This week only, we are offering a 15% discount on one of our favorites, “Introducing Inference” by Marilyn Toomey, to help you make inference more friendly to your student. Just enter in our promotional code INFER11 at checkout to redeem your savings.
The aim is to teach students that using inference in their reasoning process is using their best judgment. In the first part of the book, students identify missing parts of people, objects, or animals. For example, an image of bike with a missing wheel is accompanied by “A bicycle is supposed to have two ______, but this bicycle has only one. One ______ is missing.”
In later activities, students move on to looking for missing information in sequenced events that are presented in pictures. They are asked to explain what part of the sequence or process is missing. Finally, students will learn to predict and analyze outcomes as they read or listen to simple scenarios.
Click here for a preview of the inside of the book!
Remember, this week only, save 15%* on your order of “Introducing Inference” by entering in promo code INFER11 at checkout!
*Offer is valid through Feb. 11, 2014 at 11:59pm EST. Not compatible with any other offer. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in the code at checkout!
With yet another winter storm upon us, it’s easy to say that none of us here at Different Roads feels like stepping outside! And what better way to stay warm inside than with a do-it-yourself learning game? In keeping up with last week’s DIY theme and to prepare for Valentine’s Day, we’ve decided to share with you a DIY hearts-themed file folder game we found for you to create and play with your child. Just click here to download your free Hearts & Numbers File Folder Game!
What we love about this set of cut-out hearts is that it allows you to customize your file folder game at your own creative liberty. Here is what we’ve come up with for a fun and interactive Valentine’s Day.
Helpful hint: You can print out your dotted and numbered hearts in different-colored card stock for added charm, or allow your child to color in the hearts before gluing them down.
If you don’t have a laminator, you can seal your hearts in clear tape before cutting them out. It looks just as great and gives added protection!
Here, we created a mini pocket on the inside cover of our file folder to store our numbered hearts. This a great way to use up any remaining card stock you may have left over.
Let us know how you’re being creative with this lovely Hearts and Numbers File Folder Game. Or if you’re doing something else to spread the love this Valentine’s Day with your child, we’ve love to know as well!
I don’t know if it’s all of this talk about extreme temperatures, the polar vortex phenomenon or just an early itch for spring to arrive. Whatever it is, a current student of mine became interested in picnics and in turn I was inspired to find a new way to motivate him through challenging homework sessions in the evenings.
I decided when creating this token economy to print an abundance of items for the picnic blanket token board. I did this because the particular student I had in mind when making this was struggling to even approach the homework table, let alone begin his homework. So, I thought that having an opportunity to talk about which tokens we would bring on the “picnic” as well as which back up reinforcer he would earn in exchange for the tokens before starting to earn them would motivate him to come to the homework table more easily. In fact, this allowed for a softer transition away from preferred activities to the homework table. Depending on the student you could use five tokens or ten. We’ve assembled two printable pages of these tokens and token board for you to download here. See the steps for assembly below:
Print the files using a color printer and cut out each image.For more free autism resources, make sure to click here and sign up for our mailing list!
Introduce early math to your students with this vibrant set of 1 to 10 Counting Cans. These cans depict and contain 1 to 10 kinds of colorful fruits and vegetables for your young learner to practice counting, number recognition, and sorting. This week only, save 15% on your order of the 1 to 10 Counting Cans for by entering in our promotional code COUNT10 at checkout!
Children will also be able to expand their knowledge of a variety of fruits and vegetables that are typically not found in other play food manipulatives. This set of 55 plastic fruits and vegetables will reinforce everyday vocabulary, fine motor skills, and number sense in learners in grades pre-K and up. Each can measures 3 by 4.25 inches.
Don’t forget — this week only, you can get your own set of the 1 to 10 Counting Cans for $39.91 reduced from $46.95 by using code COUNT10 at checkout.
*Offer valid until Feb. 4, 2014 at 11:59pm EST. Not compatible with any other offer. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in the code at checkout!
Recently I received a phone call from Barbara, the mother of a 14-year-old boy who was displaying inappropriate behaviors on the train during his commute to school. We had put an intervention in place that had been successful for two months. But Barbara reported that it wasn’t working as well anymore, and the inappropriate behaviors were increasing in both intensity and frequency.
Barbara was concerned and fearful that her son’s behaviors could put him in danger. As we began discussing each incident in detail, it became clear that Barbara and her son’s other caretakers had unintentionally stopped following the intervention. A strong intervention will have multiple components, so straying from the intervention is quite common for both parents and teachers (including myself). It’s important to try to address it before it happens to help ensure long term success for your learner.
There are two simple strategies you can implement to help everyone stick to your intervention.
Write it down. Some parents I work with choose to print out the steps for their child’s intervention and place them near their computer or in their wallet so they see it on a regular basis. Having access to a reminder of the steps can be an essential part to ensuring success. For example, one of the steps in Barbara’s son’s intervention was access to his favorite comic books with new comic books available every 7-10 days. Barbara put a recurring reminder in her phone that was scheduled to appear every 7 days. Having the visual reminder helped Barbara and her husband stay on schedule with replacing the comic books in their son’s travel backpack, as well as stay on track with all the steps involved in the intervention.
Barbara’s son has now gone eight months without experiencing any increases in the inappropriate behaviors he once displayed. Because Barbara has instituted the two strategies above, we have also been able to systematically reduce the number of prompts and the frequency of reinforcement so that her son is coming closer and closer to independence.
**Name and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the identities of my clients.
We’re thrilled to introduce this brand new Fidgets Kit, exclusively created and brought to you by Different Roads in conjunction with our Behavioral Consultant Stacy Asay.
Fidget toys can be a great and socially acceptable replacement for stereotypic or repetitive behavior in the classroom or community. Some students find the repetitive action of “fidgeting” to be calming and are then better able to focus on the task at hand. Additionally, some students who have a difficult time staying still are able to sustain sitting behavior for longer periods with less support or prompting when they are manipulating something repeatedly in their hands.
In honor of the arrival of this great new kit, this week only, take 15% off of the Fidgets Kit by entering in our promotional code FIDGETS at checkout!
We’ve assembled this Fidgets Kit to include an array of items that can provide a variety of sensory experiences: stretchy, chewy, spiky, twisty, bumpy, twisty, clicky, bouncy and smooshy! We’ve included a variety of items that vary in texture or are manipulated in different ways so that they can be rotated regularly. The components have also been chosen so that they can be worn on the wrist, clipped to a belt, handheld, or attached to a piece of clothing.
Remember, this week only, take 15% off* your order of the Fidgets Kit by applying FIDGETS at checkout!
*Offer valid through 01/28/14 at 11:59pm EST. Not valid with any other offer. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in the code at checkout!