royal wedding cakes

The cooking lesson with this weekly paper was royal wedding cupcakes. The student was given a pre-made cupcake and given icing to smear on. Then they were given different toppings to decorate their royal cakes. My students absolutely loved this cooking activity.

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royal crowns

Wasn't the wedding beautiful? We had the tv in CNN in the classroom and the kids were so excited. They were able to make the connection with what they learned, and what they were seeing on tv. It was awesome to see one of my kiddos talking about a current event to a Special Olympics volunteer today. Thank you N2Y for helping make this happen! The above picture is of crowns we made. We put them on while watching the Royal Wedding. The kids felt like royalty!

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resources for the Royal Wedding

Doing a quick internet search, I found some resources for the n2y weekly paper. The first and second pictures are from sparklebox. The first is vocabulary about the royal wedding. The second is playdoh mats that have the students making wedding related objects out of playdoh. The last picture is of picture/communication boards pertaining to the royal wedding. You can find those resources at WWW.boardmakershare.com . The students are surprisingly doing well with this short unit!

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Back from vacation

Today was a teacher workday, and tomorrow the students come back from vacation.  I had a fantastic vacation, and am so excited to see my students come back.  This week is a little out of the ordinary for the class due to starting the week on a Tuesday and having our Special Olympics spring games on Thursday.  Since it is a short academic week, we will not be starting our ULS unit until next week.  The plan for this week, is to enjoy our News 2 You weekly paper about the Royal Wedding.  I am excited to be back on the blog and sharing with you extension ideas to our Unique Learning System and News 2 you curriculum. 

If you are a new reader, welcome!  I hope you find something of use to you on my blog.  If you are a returning reader, thank you for coming back.  I appreciate that you choose my blog as one of the blogs that you follow.

Odd/Even Workstation task

This task was really fun and super simple to make.  The materials I used were: blue serving tray, 2 plastic cups found at Michael's, a frozen meals container, and pictures of Cars characters.  I placed numbers 1-30 on each card. The student places the odd or even number into the corresponding cup. This was a very highly motivating task for my kiddo's that love this movie!

Adapted Reader Kit

This adapted reader kit is based off a simple reader (the author/company escapes my memory at the moment) out of a collection in my classroom.  All of my reader kits contain different activities while all of them have 1 or 2 activities that focus on the high frequency words.  Here is a list of what you see:

1. Adapted Reader Book-- I first make color copies of the images that I want to use as the matching pieces (I try to buy 2 of the same book and cut images from one book, and the other is used as the actual reader).  Then I cut the book apart, laminate it and apply velcro where the pieces are to be matched. 

2. I create 1 or 2 reading comprehension activities.  The activity with this book is a simple "What animals were in the story", and they have to circle the images of the animals that were in the story. 

3. I took the HFW from the story and put each one onto a 3x5 card cut from cardstock.  You could use stickers or make a template on your computer and type into your template.  The clothespins have letters that match the cards.  The student finds the clothespin and clips it to the laminated HFW cards.

4. The last activity is another HFW practice.  Again, the words are taken from the story.  This time instead of clothespins clipped to cards, the letters are placed on using velcro.  This is also another fantastic fine motor finger strengthening skill!

When I need an adapted reader that is very specific, I usually make my own.  I have a subscription to a royalty free graphics website and create simple adapted reader books.  This method really gives me the flexibility to get to that very specific subject or skill I'm looking for.

Do you create adapted readers?  I would love to hear your tips/stories!

Fine Motor task

This task uses pencils and a coffee can.  Students have to push the pencils into the lid of the coffee can.  The holes are just large enough to provide enough resistance.