June 23: Resources

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share some resources that may be helpful for you over the summer.

First, Autism Calgary has a list of COVID-19 online resources that includes contact info for support groups in Calgary, FSCD info, sites for children, and mental health resources: https://autismcalgary.com/covid19resources/

Autism Calgary also has a Keeping It Together (KIT) Mother's Group and Father's Autism Network (FAN) Group: https://autismcalgary.com/kit/
https://autismcalgary.com/fan/

The Autism Awareness Centre website is another great resource to find info on upcoming conferences and training sessions, books and products, and articles and blog posts from Maureen Bennie, creator of the Autism Awareness Centre and mother to two adults with autism in Calgary: https://autismawarenesscentre.com

Between Friends has a list of at-home resources for families: https://betweenfriends.ab.ca/at-home-resources-for-families/

Finally, Calgary's Child Magazine has a list of summer camps with at-home and in-person options: https://calgaryschild.com/resources/summer-camp-program-guide-2020

June 16: Art activities

Check out some fun summer art activities below!

1. Sidewalk Chalk Paint

Materials needed:

• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 2/3 cup water
• Food colouring

Steps:

• Mix together the water and cornstarch and stir until the cornstarch dissolves.
• Divide the paint mixture into the wells of a muffin tin or similar painting tray.
• Add Food colouring to achieve desired colours.
• Have fun painting the sidewalk!

2. Shoe fish

Materials needed:

• Shoe
• Pencil
• Piece of paper
• Crayons or markers
• Watercolour paint (optional)

Steps:

• Have child trace shoe onto paper.
• Using the shoe outline as the fish, decorate the fish by adding fins, gills, eyes, mouth, and scales.
• When drawing is complete, colour the fish with markers or create a crayon resist drawing (painting over crayon).

3. Fruit and Vegetable Painting

Materials needed:

• Paint or ink
• Sponges
• Cookie tray 
• Paintbrushes
• Water 
• Fruits and vegetables of all kinds (some good ones are: mushrooms, cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers, apples)

Steps:

• Dip fruits and vegetables into paint or ink and stamp them onto paper.
• You may instead wish to apply paint or ink directly to veg/fruit with a paintbrush.
• Have fun making cool patterns!

4. Pool noodle sailboats

Materials needed:

• Pool noodles
• Paper for sails (cut into triangles)
• Straws
• Large plastic container (to put sailboats in)
• Water
• Scissors

Steps:

• Cut pool noodles into 2-3 inch segments.
• Cut straws in half.
• Cut two small slits into triangle pieces (one near the top and one near the bottom to slide straw through).
• Slide straw into triangle piece (sail).
• Push sail into pool noodle.
• Place boats in water and sail away, Captain!

June 12: Art activities

Hi everyone,

I want to spend the next few blog posts sharing some fun and easy summer art activities you could try at home with your child.

1. Painting with various objects

Materials needed:

• Washable Paint

• Open containers to put paint in

• Water balloons (half full)

• Fruit/vegetables 

• Toilet paper rolls (bottom half cut in strips)

• Any stamp you would like to use

• Paper to stamp on

Steps:

• Set out multiple containers with various paint colours in them.

• Dip your chosen stamp into the paint and stamp onto your paper.

• Be creative and create your own masterpiece!

2) Coffee filter butterlies

Materials needed:

• Tissue paper (cut in small squares/all colours)

• Coffee filters (round) or white paper (cut into circles)

• Water

• Spray bottles or paint brushes

• Pipe cleaners

NOTE: Some tissues papers are non-bleeding. You want the paper that is labeled "colours bleed when wet".

Steps:

• Take coffee filter (or paper cut to shape) and have children spray or paint completely with water.

• Place squares of tissue paper on wet paper or coffee filter.

• Let dry about 15 minutes.

• Remove tissue paper and the colors will remain.

• Take the pipe cleaner and wrap it around the center of the filter and bend ends to look like antenna. Cut to length and glue (if using the paper).

• You could also have children put tissue paper on one side only, fold paper in half and have the colours transfer from one side to the other with the coffee filters…one placed on top of the other (with tissue paper in between) will also transfer the colours from one to the other spray bottle and paint brushes give the children different small motor experiences.

3) Rock Painting

Materials needed:

• Rocks
• Paint
• Sharpies

Steps:

• Pick smooth, flat rocks.
• Wash and dry the rocks before decorating them.
• Paint your design on top using coloured sharpies and apply several coats. Let dry between layers.
• Use thin tip sharpies for details.

June 4: Predictable chart writing at home

Before classroom closures, our students were participating in a daily literacy program called predictable chart writing. CBE's support services for inclusive learning have created a document for families to try and do predictable chart writing at home with their children. I will share that information below:

May 25: Name activities

Learning to recognize and print you own name is an important skill. There are many fun ways you can work on your child's name with them! I'll share some of those in this blog post.

Write their name with baking soda sidewalk paint and spray it with vinegar for a fizzy reaction!

Check out the fizzy sidewalk paint recipe here:

https://handsonaswegrow.com/outdoor-play-homemade-sidewalk-paint/

Use clothespins and a cut up alphabet mat to work on letter recognition as a prerequisite to name recognition (I'll send lowercase and uppercase alphabet mats directly to you after this as an email attachment)

Use manipulatives like magnets, puzzle pieces, or foam letters to match to the letters of their name

Write their name and then use pipe cleaners to form the letters of their name to trace overtop - this is also a great fine motor activity!

Incorporate name printing into a tactile sensory experience like playing with shaving cream 

Practice matching the letters of their name with sidewalk chalk (write a bunch of random letters and have them circle the letters of their name or draw lines from each letter in order to spell their name) 

Write the letters of their name on stickers for them to match to their written name for practice

If printing is a challenge, practice writing their name with a keyboard or on a tablet with a visual reference

Create family photo cards with names to create an understanding of names and to play a variety of name games

 For more ideas of ways to use the photo cards, check out this link: https://teachmama.com/family-playing-cards-take-em-make-em-then-play/

Practice writing each letter of their name on rainbow coloured paper strips

For more information about setting up the rainbow name activity, check out this link: https://handsonaswegrow.com/learn-spell-name-make-rainbow/

May 21: Physical literacy

Hi everyone,

I'm going to share below some physical literacy resources with you in case you are looking for more ideas to keep your family exercising and staying active during this time spent at home. Enjoy!

ANIMAL WALKS:

May 12: How to make cloud dough

Our tactile system is our sense of touch, but that doesn't just refer to our hands! We perceive tactile sensory input through our skin, and this helps us understand sensations like pressure, texture, hot/cold, and pain. If a child is having difficulty with this sensory system, there are things we can do to help develop the tactile system. Here are 4 tips from the Autism Helper:

Below is a link to a recipe for making cloud dough, which would be a great tactile experience! All you need is cornstarch, conditioner, a mixing bowl, a spoon, and measuring cups. Check it out!


https://theautismhelper.com/sensory-play-making-cloud-dough/

*Please remember, gradual exposure to tactile experiences is important when dealing with a tactile defensive child. Don't force your child to touch the cloud dough with their hands if they don't want to; you could offer a utensil to explore with first!*

May 7: How to make squishy bags

Squishy bags are a cool and easy thing to make that can be used as a sensory tool or printing tool!

Materials needed:

• mixing bowl
• large ziplock bag (22cm x 22cm)
• tape (for sealing bag)
• flour
• food colouring
• water
• q-tip (for printing)

Instructions:

Place 1 cup of flour into mixing bowl and add a few drops of food colouring

Add 6 tablespoons of water

Mix together

Spoon the mixture into the ziplock bag

Seal ziplock bag

Tape over the seal of the bag to provide extra protection from the bag opening

And that's it! You can place a white piece of paper under the bag to make it easier to see when you print with a q-tip on the bag. Have fun!

April 28: Supporting communication using shared reading

Many kids love to read. And many kids love to read the same books over and over and over again! This can be one advantage to using shared reading as a strategy to work on communication skills with your child. (Shared reading is reading with a child, not simply to a child, and is an interactive reading experience that involves having a conversation around a book.) Using the same book over and over again to teach core vocabulary can be an effective way to provide repetitive modelling of language for your child!

We can use core vocabulary boards and topic boards (the ones with fringe/specific vocabulary) to facilitate communication during a shared reading experience with a child. When we model language with a core board when reading, it is important to remember that this is a conversation, not an interrogation. We are inviting a child to respond if they wish, not expecting/forcing a response! We are providing expectant pauses to allow children time to process and form a response. And we are accepting any responses and reflecting that response using the core board. What I mean by reflecting the response is that if you make a comment and your child responds by smiling, touching something, or looking at something, we can reflect their response by using the core board. We could say, "I think you like that", while pointing to "you" and "like" on our core board. We interpret their message for them, even if their response does not seem intentional and does not involve them speaking or pointing to a picture on a core board. Like I mentioned in my last blog post about core boards and communication, it may take a LONG time for children to begin using core boards to expressively communicate, so our job at first is simply to provide A LOT of modelling! 😀

Many of our students really enjoy alphabet books. After making this blog post I'm going to email you an animal specific topic board as well as an alphabet board that you could use while reading an alphabet book in conjunction with the traditional core board. This way, you could use the core board to make comments, like "I see", and the topic boards to say "e" and "elephant".

Another type of book that is nice to use in a shared reading experience is any type of book that has repetition. For example, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" might be a good book to read with your child as it is highly predictable, uses powerful rhythm, a little bit of rhyming, and includes repetitive use of core words (look/see, me, what, you).

Here's an example of a teacher using the "CAR" reading strategy with her student while doing some shared reading with a core board. CAR stands for comment, ask a question, and respond by adding a little more.

When the teacher responds, "ya, you're right, they're going to help", she may simply be interpreting the student's message for them. The student may have given no response, but the teacher created a response to model for the student how they could make their own response one day.

Finally, here's an example of the types of conversations that could be started while reading books with your child, as well as the types of core words you could target.

And remember, you don't have to sit and read an entire book from start to finish with your child! I know many children are not ready to sit and read a whole book yet. So choosing just 2 pages to look at together and talk about is a great start! Happy reading! 😊

April 23: Core vocabulary & communication

I want to spend the next couple blog posts talking about core vocabulary and communication.

Core vocabulary is a small set of highly useful words that makes up about 70% of what we say on a daily basis. Core words are words like: go, stop, I, no, want, what, in. The advantage of teaching core language to students with complex communication needs is that these words can be combined to make a variety of different messages, like: no go, want go, go in, etc. Here is an example of some types of core vocabulary boards we would use at school with our students:

Some core boards are colour-coded based on category (yellow for pronouns, green for verbs, etc.), and some are not.

Today I will email you some different types of core vocabulary boards you can download and print to try using with your child at home if you would like. I will also send some communication topic boards you could use to facilitate communication with highly specific vocabulary (aka "fringe vocabulary") while doing things like cooking or playing with play doh.

Check out the following video that describes the difference between teaching core vocabulary and fringe vocabulary (highly specific vocabulary that can only be used to mean ONE thing):

When we first introduce core vocabulary to our students, our job is simply to MODEL. Just like teaching any other form of language or communication, students will not innately know how to use it, so we must teach them! There are many different types of activities you could incorporate at home using core vocabulary. I will list some examples below:

Teaching go:

• Point to the word go on the core board while playing with cars ("the car can go down the ramp!")
• Point to the word go on the core board during meal times ("go sit down")
• Point to the word go on the core board during bed time routine ("go brush your teeth", "go to your bedroom", "go pick a book")

Teaching want:

• Point to the word want on the core board while playing with cars ("you want the red car", "I want a turn")
• Point to the word want on the core board during meal times ("do you want a cookie?", "I want more")
• Point to the word want on the core board during bed time routine ("Mom wants a kiss", "you want the Dora book")

It's important to recognize that when modelling the use of core language with a core board, you do not need to point to every word you say. For example, if you were to say "I want more cookies", you could just point to the word "I", or you could point to "I" and "want", or you could point to "I" and "want" and "more" and then use a specific food topic board to point to the word "cookies". It all depends on your child's level of understanding, and what core words you would like to teach.

Here's an example of how to use a core board during 7 everyday games:

Here's an example of how to use a core board combined with some fringe vocabulary specific to playing with lego:

So, try incorporating some modelling of core vocabulary at home when interacting with your child to support their communication skill development! The hope is that eventually they will be able to use core boards to communicate expressively with others. Please let me know if you have any further questions about related to core vocabulary or communication in general. Take care!

April 15: Conditions for success

On your child's IPP, you will see a section titled "conditions for success". This is where a students' unique social/emotional, physical, cultural, and intellectual needs are considered in an effort to create optimal learning experiences for them at school. Many of our students' conditions for success include sensory considerations. In this blog post I'd like to discuss how you could consider your child's conditions for success at home from a sensory perspective in order to best prepare them for at-home learning.

First, I wanted to include the following video that describes some common sensory needs that children with autism may have and how to cope with them:

Some common strategies we incorporate at school to support our students' sensory needs are:

• offering noise-reducing headphones 
• offering frequent movement breaks (i.e. jumping on the trampoline, running, heavy work like carrying full backpacks, pushing/pulling a wagon)
• providing access to sensory play/tactile input (i.e. rice and sand sensory bins, water play)
• turning off bright classroom lights and using alternate lighting like lamps or coloured/twinkly lights
• offering quiet breaks after active periods (i.e. dimming the lights and playing quiet music after coming back from gym class) → if you want to use the same music videos we use at school for our quiet breaks, check out this link: https://www.symbaloo.com/shared/AAAABn9THxwAA42ADFXFWw==

You all probably know what sensory experiences your child is over- or under-sensitive to by now, but I will include the following sensory symptoms checklist in case you are interested in revisiting this: https://sensationalbrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/SB-Sensory-Checklist-English-2017.pdf

I also wanted to include the following ideas for calming and alerting activities you could incorporate at home:

Here's another website with some great sensory ideas you can incorporate at home: https://inclusiveteach.com/2020/03/20/150-sensory-learning-ideas/?fbclid=IwAR2NoV_UQUTyYI4VVW09saGr0KeFpVLjbZupPYncznOx2dT4VnWRMKUdVd4

Finally, if you are interested in trying to make some of your own sensory bins at home (most of our students LOVE them), a quick Google search gives you TONS of ideas for cheap, easy bins you can make at home--often with materials you already have! Playing with sensory bins are often great independent activities that children can engage in without too much adult direction, so perhaps YOU can take a break! 😜

April 8: Using household items to work on matching and sorting skills

I've been talking with some of you lately about how to use household items to work on matching or sorting skills. We work on these skills with our students a lot at school. These are great skills that are easily transferable to the work place one day (think of jobs that may involve sorting cutlery, stocking shelves, etc.). I wanted to share some photos of ideas I've found that you could try at home:

Use a deck of cards to have your child sort a pile of black and a pile of red. To make it more challenging, they could sort by number, put in numerical order, or even sort by suit afterwards!

Use coloured paper to cut into small pieces and have your child sort the pieces onto the corresponding coloured mats. This could also be made into a sort by shape task!

Have your child sort some beans by colour.

Use random household objects to sort by colour on plates.  

Use letters from alphabet puzzles to make a sort by letter activity. 

A more challenging literacy sorting activity could be sorting objects/toys into baskets labelled with their beginning sound/letter.

Use fridge magnet letters to sort by colour. This could also work as a sorting by uppercase or lowercase letter task.

As a numeracy challenge, use beans or other food items to count out the correct number of objects into the corresponding numbered bowls.

Muffin tins also work great to sort objects like pompoms by colour. 

Have your child sort socks by colour (and as an additional skill, fold/roll them!), sort cutlery, match lids to the corresponding Tupperware containers, and use ice cube trays to sort buttons by colour.