Shadow Box 3D Paper Craft for Kids

We've had some rainy weather here lately, and to stay busy indoors, we made these 3D shadowboxes! I looked through some pictures of the kids and printed them out on paper. Next I found some small boxes, and lined them with scrapbook paper. The rest of the decorating I left to the kids, and it was fun to see what they came up with!

Sometimes it can be hard to find crafts for boys, so I especially liked that this one let my little guy decorate and really "put himself" into the adventure!

Have you tried making shadowboxes before? If you want to come back to this, just pin the link below to save it for later. Thanks for visiting!

Life Skills Math Special Education Curriculum with Pre-written IEP Goals

I created this curriculum to help with one of my biggest struggles... How do I assess multiple goals in one class period? Time is always a precious commodity, so I wanted to create something that would give me more instructional time. 

This curriculum runs through a two-week cycle, assessing all goals within that time. It loops throughout the whole year, so your students can go back over concepts they have already learned to retain their understanding. 

Pre-assessments and data collection sheets are also included, as well as 11 pre-written IEP goals. Here are the goals this math unit covers: 

GOAL #1, MONEY COUNTING: 
When given various sums of money, STUDENT will improve ability to correctly identify and count a given sum of money including pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills from ___ correct to ___ correct by DATE.

GOAL #2, ANALOG TIME: 
When given an analog clock, STUDENT will improve ability to correctly identify time from ___ attempts correct to ___ attempts correct by DATE.

GOAL #3 GRAPH READING: 
When given a bar graph and questions pertaining to it, STUDENT will improve ability to read information from a graph from ___ correct to ___ correct by DATE.

GOAL #4 FRACTIONS: 
When given the following fractions: 1/8, 1/6, ¼, 1/3, ½, 1, STUDENT will improve their ability to identify and understand the values of from ___ correctly identified to ___ correctly identified by DATE.

GOAL #5, IDENTIFYING COINS: 
When given a variety of coins including pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, STUDENT will improve their ability to determine the value of individual coins from ___ correct to ___ correct by DATE.

GOAL #6, STORY PROBLEM: 
When given a story problem at the 2nd grade reading level including addition or subtraction, STUDENT will improve their ability to correctly solve from ___ correct to ___ correct by DATE.

GOAL #7, ORDERING NUMBERS: 
When given a combination of different numbers, STUDENT will identify the correct number sequence improving their ability to place the numbers in order from ___ correct to ___ correct by DATE.

GOAL #8, READING A CALENDAR: 
When given a monthly calendar, STUDENT will correctly identify the correct amount of days, weeks, or months that have passed improving ability to read a calendar from ___ correct to ___ correct by DATE. 

GOAL #9 MEASURING: 
When given an object to measure and a ruler that measures in inches, STUDENT will determine the length of an object in increments of ½ inch, ¾ inch, and 1 inch, improving ability to correctly identify lengths from ___ to ___ by DATE.

GOAL #10: DISCERNING BETWEEN PRICES: 
When given two choices of items to purchase with different values, STUDENT will improve their ability to find the item with the lower price improving their ability to shop using a budget from ___ to ___ by DATE.

GOAL #11, BASIC MATH CALCULATIONS (DAILY PRACTICE): 
When given single and multi-digit addition and subtraction problems, STUDENT will solve correctly, improving accuracy from ___ correct to ___ correct by DATE.

Check out the entire math unit here at Teachers Pay Teachers:

Life Skills Daily Math 

And don't forget that you can earn free points on TPT when you leave feedback! 

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Sorting Items by Smell in the Special Education Classroom

Sorting Items by Smell Vocational Task for the Special Education Classroom

I'm always looking for new ways to challenge my students, and this one I'm really excited about! I've taken small lip gloss tubes and filled each one with a cotton ball soaked in soap scents. The student then smells each tube, and places it on the Velcro square by the cooresponding image of what they smelled.

My students love this challenge! It's a bit of a break from their usual tasks, because really, how often do we actually use our nose? I always make sure my tasks relate to real-world generalization, so I have to ask myself "How could they use this at a job or home?" I think in a lot of ways...

"Is this milk good, or sour?"

"Are these socks clean or dirty?"

"Is this chili powder or cinnamon?"

"Did I put on too much cologne for work today?"

So task this may not directly relate to any specific job skill, but I think it's also fun for the students, and still works on the skills of being able to organize and catalog specific items. Also, it might just be novel enough to capture the interest of struggling learners!

•  Overall Price: $5-7 for all materials (I had them on hand)
• Difficulty level: Basic
• Skills focused on: Fine motor skills, scent identification, basic categorization skills
 

Want to try it out, but not right now? Pin the image below to Pinterest to come back to it later, and thanks for looking!

Life Skills Fine Motor Hand Strength Building Sorting Activity

Fine Motor Skills Color Identification and Matching

I created this activity many years ago to help a few middle schoolers build basic hand strength to improve their writing skills. They loved the novelty of it and were excited to do it each day when they were done with their work! At the high school level I modified the task to work on hand strength, but also adding an additional step of color identification.

The box stores the clips and is also part of the task. The student needs to find the coorsponding sticker color and match the clip to it.

• Overall Price: $4.00 for all materials at Staples
• Difficulty level: Intermediate
• Skills focused on: Fine motor skills, color identification, builds hand strength

Want to try it out, but not right now? Pin the image below to Pinterest to come back to it later, and thanks for looking!

Refilling Salt & Pepper Shakers Vocational Task for the Life Skills Classroom

Vocational Task Practice for the Special Education Classroom.

This project uses simple items found at the Dollar Store to let students practice the job skill of refilling salt and pepper shakers. This could also be somewhat useful at home, as it gives skills of carefully measuring dry goods used in cooking recipes.

I was able to find packs of small salt and pepper containers which looked like they were marketed for party or wedding venues. The funnel came in a three pack, and the containers I used for the salt and pepper storage are recycled baby food containers. I bought black and white sand instead of using salt and pepper so that I would not have any sneezing issues if someone got some pepper in their nose!

Included in the task are pairs of plastic gloves. I want to teach my students that any time you work with food, you should be wearing gloves. Also, by practicing putting on gloves on a regular basis, my students will already be familiar with that part of the process if they should ever have a job in the food service industry.

• Overall Price: $4.00 for all materials at Dollar Tree
• Difficulty level: Advanced
• Skills focused on: Fine motor skills, letter identification, ability to categorize by shade of sand.

Want to try it out, but not right now? Pin the image below to Pinterest to come back to it later, and thanks for looking!