Summer of Learning: Social Games

Remember all those fun camp games your used to play?  Why not incorporate those into your summer of learning? It's a great way for kids to work on maintaining social skills, making friends, and getting active!

Today's post will focus on some tried and true games we have utilized in my classroom over the years!  Most of these we have done during summer school this year and they have been a huge hit!  We have had 20 kids with autism engaged for up to 90 minutes (!!) using a combination of these games.   We usually write a schedule out on the white board, and then get to playing!  We call this generically DRAMA TIME since we are working on imagination skills, creativity, and using our minds, bodies, and voices in different ways.

Summer of Learning: Summer Unit

Welcome to Day 4 of my Summer of Learning Series.  Today, I will be sharing a unit I created to work on Summer vocabulary and counting!  I have a lot of kids working on identifying letters, identifying numbers, counting, reading words, and labeling pictures.  This unit covers all of those academic topics while using a fun and engaging topic (SUMMER!) with functional vocabulary words.

Click Here or on the picture below to see this product in my TPT store.

Summer of Learning: Cooking

Welcome to Day 3 of my Summer of Learning Series!  Today we will focus on my students' favorite topic: COOKING!  Cooking helps your kids work on reading skills, following directions, fine motor skills, math skills related to counting and measuring, science skills related to solids/liquids, communication skills of requesting required items and SO MUCH MORE!  Plus, everyone has to eat...so why not let the kids get involved and help?!

If you haven't already liked Autism Tank on Facebook, you should hop on over today because there may or may not just be a little Freebie posted today (wink wink).  Also, all summer long, I will be sharing Freebies and Giveaways exclusively with my Facebook Followers and Twitter Followers (@autismtank)

Summer of Learning: Crafts

Welcome to day 2 of summer activities to keep your kiddos entertained and learning this summer. Today, I've compiled a lot of my favorite summer crafts to share with you. Working on crafts help keep up fine motor skills as well as works on building vocabulary, and following directions skills. 

These crafts all include materials you should have easily accessible if not already laying around your classroom/house. 

Summer of Learning: Community Trips

Whether you are a special education teacher at summer school, a counselor at summer camp, or a parent with your kids home for the summer, you may be about ready for some ideas to keep kids engaged and learning this summer!  This week's mini-series should help you come up with some fun, yet simple ideas to help keep your kids busy, while also retaining what they learned during the school year!

I was asked to participate in this post by Personal Creations who are trying to help encourage parents to spend time working with their children to keep them always moving forward with their education (even during time off from school1) 

JULY

Happy 4th of July!  Happy Summer!  Today is a beautiful day where I live and I just got back from a lovely run!  We have the best weekend planned of relaxing, bbq-ing, chilling at the pool, biking, and boating.  EXACTLY the way I like to celebrate America...ha!

Today's post I am linking  up with Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade!  Check out her site and link up as well!  I also wanted to announce a last minute flash sale!  I will have my entire TPT store 20% all day today and tomorrow in honor of the 4th of July!

Before, During, After: Cutest Plants EVER!

Hello again!  I got majorly caught up in the end of the school year and traveling, but now that I only have to teach half day summer school, I am back in blogging action!

I saw this cute idea on Pinterest and we decided to try it during our planting unit in June.  Simply add 50% grass seed and 50% dirt to a plastic cup, decorate, and watch them grow!

Here is the BEFORE picture,