Our first lesson in our mini grocery store is complete! My boss was gracious enough to find me the shelving and it's perfect! We also have a grocery store going out of business locally and they sold me the three baskets for 5 bucks each! The cards are in three levels, each level containing 3 cards. Green has 5 grocery items, yellow 10, and red 15. They will have to master each level (all three cards) to move on. I also laminated the answer cards and set them in the little tray on the register along with a dry erase marker that has been velcroed on. I'm anxious for the kids to begin! Update: I have posted the lists in my store to save myself some time emailing them. Click HERE!
Look at all these great grocery store items we received in the mail last week from DonorsChoose!! I have been trying to get more activity boxes that are geared towards vocational skills and I thought one working in a grocery store would be fun for the kids. The only downside is that it doesn't fit in a small box like my other activities, and I am desperately waiting for someone to find me some sort of shelving I can keep it on. For now, we will live with it taking up our entire back table.
Along with the food we also received toy cash registers. Last Friday I stayed after work and took pictures of each of the food items. My thought was to put together picture grocery list for the kids to use to find the items. Then I thought, since most my kids are pretty good at reading or at least sounding out, I would put the picture lists on the back burner and do written lists instead. I still plan to do the picture lists for our lower kids, but for now, this is what my class will work with.
I found a really cheap price gun on Ebay for 10 bucks and priced each of the items with the sticker. I also made these grocery lists and an answer page as well. Today was the first day trying it out with the kids and they really seemed to love it. I told them they didn't have to do all three of the lists and could put their answer key in their box and come back another time, but each of the 4 that worked on it today wanted to do all three of the cards. Here's what I learned. Of the four kids who did the lesson, each of them had different answers on their answer sheets for each list. Though they enjoyed the activity, and it really kept their attention, their accuracy was not that great. So, new plan. I am going to shorten the lists and make different levels. I think these ones I did above will be at the highest, a level 3. So, by the beginning of next week, we will have levels 1 and 2 ready to go. They can start there, and as they master those lists, they can move up to a card with higher difficulty. So much going on to fit all this in but we'll make it happen. Friday will be the last of my 5 Freshman IEP's that have to be completed within the first 30 days of school and I should get the keys to my new house two weeks from today!!! Hope everything is going well in your class. No more days off for awhile so we shall trudge along! I have posted the lists in my store if you are interested in owning a set. You can find them HERE Tootles,
I wanted to let you all in on these amazing video's I was introduced to at the autism conference. Walking around the first day, I had the opportunity to speak and hear about a program for kids with special needs that was all about safety. Since I have a hard time finding good age appropriate video's for my students I was pretty excited. I put my name into the basket to try to win one of the 4 disc DVD's for my program and was looking forward to seeing their break out presentation the next day.
Let me say, I was NOT disappointed! These DVD's would be a great asset to any classroom. During the presentation we had the opportunity to watch a variety of the clips the DVD's provide. Each clip is meant to be very interactive, so after each clip we watched, we practiced what we would have the kids do, which was stand up and act out each of the scenes, doing it the wrong way first then the right way. The kids in the video's are older which is great for our kids. Here's what each video contains:
Part 1: SAFETY IN THE COMMUNITY
Introduction
1. Confidence and Bearing
2. 911 Be Ready
3. Your ID/ Safe Person Card: Never Leave Home Without It
4. Your ID is for You, Your Money is for You
5. At The Bus Stop
6. On The Bus
7. ATM Awareness
8. Stranger Danger
9. If You Are Confronted
PART 2: SEXUAL ASSAULT: VICTIM/WITNESS
CAUTION: OFFER AND PROVIDE RESPECT AND SENSITIVITY TO YOUR VIEWERS, MANY OF WHOM HAVE ALREADY BEEN SEXUALLY ASSAULTED AND MAY EXPERIENCE FLASHBACKS AND REIGNITED TRAUMA. Part 2 requires trained counselors on board at time of showing STRONGLY CAUTION your viewers.
1. Review/introduction
2. A Friendship Blossoms
3. Sexual Assault: Dorien’s Apartment
4. After the Assault: What To Expect: Call 911 First Responder: Interview with Law Enforcement SART: Sexual Assault Response Team Forensic Interview with Medical Nurse interview With Detective Forensic Medical Exam
5. Victim/Witness Advocate: There Is Help for You I Believe in You
6. Courtroom Orientation: What to Expect: Prosecutor Other people in the Courtroom, including the offender Hard Questions in the Witness Box.
7. Sexual Molestation: How to Make It Stop! Reporting sexual molestation What to Expect
PART 3: HOME ALONE: SAFE AND STRONG
1. Introduction and Review
2. Home Security
3. Telephone Safety
4. Telemarketing: No Thank You, and Hang Up The Phone
5. Strangers At Your Door: Never Open The Door
6. If You Believe You Are In Danger: Call 911
7. Home Invasions: Get Out, Get Away, Get Help. Call 911
PART 4 ENCOUNTERS WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT
1. What To Do
2. *Safe Cards and ID
3. Who To Call
4. What To Say And What Not To Say
We will not be offering Part 2 in my program for the time being.
So far we have only done the first 4 chapters of disk 1 and the kids (and me) are loving it! Oh, I forgot to mention, I won one of the DVD sets while at the conference!! It's really weird because I knew I was going to win, I don't know how I knew, but I knew. So, how do you get your own DVD set for your class or program? I have good news and bad news. The good news is, if you live in the state of California you can borrow a copy from your regional center for free, (apparently they were all mailed quite a few) since this was a collaboration of departments throughout our state. If you don't live in California I believe the set is around 300 dollars, but if you can get your school to pay for it, I would say it is well worth the cost.
She did state that all regional centers in CA have them, and if for some reason yours does not, they can contact the company to get a copy. Here is the link if your interested in learning more about the program.
I made these cards up a few years ago and tried to pitch them to a few teachers and got some pretty bad reviews, so I put it on the back burner and didn't give it much more thought. They thought parents would not want their child to carry such cards. So, at the conference I went to in August, during one of the break out sessions, the speaker talked about how all the kids should carry some sort of identification card with them at all times. She suggested in their wallet for more verbal kids and in the shoe for non. Though, seems it would be a long time before someone checked a kids shoe to be able to find it. My kids are in the 18 to 22 age range. I took a poll today and only 25 percent of them actually have a California identification card (probably lower for our emerging kids). So, I'm going to bring it back to the table again and see if any of the new teachers want to bring it up the parents as an option and we can easily print them and laminate.
The ones posted here were for our kids with autism, but we can change the disability to anything and even customize it depending on the child (or the parent). Do you think parents would be interested in something like this? Do your kids carry ID? Where do they carry it? We've been watching this great video I won during the conference (i'll tell you about that this weekend), and during the video's it talks about the kids having their ID on them, so I think my kids would think it's really cool to have it. Alright, just a thought, I'll let you know if I get shot down again, lol.
