Fly Me To The Moon

This past week we had an outerspace theme at the summer rec program. This is always a favorite week, and a theme that we keep from year to year even when we change some of the other themes. It can be hard coming up with new ideas for activities for the same theme each year, which we try to do because many of the kids come back every year. They could feasibly be in the rec program every summer from the year they are 5 to the year they are 13, so doing the same projects and games every single year could get old!

First off, here are the sensory bins I added to our sensory area. I know a lot of people make their sensory bins really elaborate, and turn them into a realistic scene with animals and stuff. However, our kids tend to just want to dig in, rather than do a lot of pretend playing, so we keep it pretty simple.

This first one is just aquarium gravel that I found at WalMart. It is black with some flourescent stones thrown in, to represent planets. The gravel actually came that way so I didn't have to mix it myself.
Later I added some glow stars that I found.













The next one is full of confetti stars that I found at Dollar Tree.

We made Alien Slime. You've probably made Alien Slime, but called it something else. It is usually called Gak or Flubber. My favorite slime recipe involves adding equal parts of Elmer's Glue and liquid laundry starch. I saw an idea on another blog that you could add stars to your slime, so I put out the stars from the sensory bin at first. But it turned out that these particular stars are really spikey and made the slime a little painful to play with. I gave every kid a 4 ounce bottle of glue, and a cup with four ounces of starch, so all they had to do was follow the directions to mix food coloring into the glue and add the starch. Most of them loved it! A few thought it was disgusting.

For a snack, we made Moon Munchies. This involves simply spreading cream cheese over a rice cake, and then adding Cheerios as craters. I originally found the idea at Things To Share And Remember. They also used bananas, but since the kids used bananas last week for their cooking project, I didn't want to do it again. I really wanted to use round pretzels, but I couldn't find any at Safeway! It didn't end up mattering. The kids loved these. The adults loved them too! Plus they have barely any calories, so even our kids with diabetes, who have to keep careful track of calories, could eat them with no worries. Here's the example one I made... and then I ate it because I didn't bring a lunch that day!

What we do at the program is have two activities running at once, twice in a row, so half of the kids go to Activity A and half to Activity B, and then they switch. I usually run one of the activities, so there are two activities that I didn't get any pictures of, unfortunately. The first one was the stomp rockets. We had wanted to have some sort of rocket launch, I remembered watching some kids at a special ed school do a rocket launch involving a bike pump, and there was also a way to make a water rocket, and a few other ways that involved actual explosives. But they all seemed hard to do, and I wanted something that was basically fool proof so we wouldn't have a bunch of disappointed kids on our hands if we made something that didn't work. I ended up ordering a Stomp Rocket, and also a Jump Rocket, which is basically a different brand of the same product. Both sets include a stand, an air pump, and foam rockets. You stick a rocket on the stand, then the kids stomp or jump on the air pump, and the rocket goes flying up in the air. The kids had a blast (no pun intended) watching and chasing after the flying rockets. We kept them out all week at recess for the kids to play with, and we'll most likely keep them around for the rest of the summer just because they are fun.

The other activity the kids enjoyed was an Astronaut Training Course, which we did in the gym. It was basically an obstacle course. Here were the stations...
1. I had a duvet cover that I stuffed with pillows and stuffed animals. I called it the Surface Of The Moon, and the kids had to clamber over it.
2. We had two different tunnels... just the regular kind you can buy and pop up.
3. We put polydots out, and called them asteroids. The kids had to jump from asteroid to asteroid.
4. I taped some pool noodles to the ground, and the kids used them as a balance beam.
5. We have a set of Moon Shoes, so the kids had to put those on and walk to a designated line and back.
6. I dragged in our mini trampoline from the sensory room. The kids had to jump ten times to experience "zero gravity."
7. I put some wiffle balls in a bucket. We have a little pop-up basketball hoop set, so the kids had to throw the wiffle balls (or Moon Rocks, as we called them) into the basket.
8. There was a spinning office chair. The kids had to sit on it and get spinned around ten times, and we called it our Rocket Seat.
9. We had some small stuffed animals that we called aliens. We also have a claw grabber toy. The kids had to use the claw grabber toy to pick up the aliens and toss them into the hula hoop of protection.
10. The last one I just thought of at the spur of the moment. We have a box fan in the gym because we have no air conditioning. I told the kids to say their name into the box fan, and called it our Astronaut Message Transmitter, because they could hear their voices sounding weird through the fan.

We used this as a structured activity, but also left it out for the rest of the day so the kids could play in it during their free time if they wanted.

That pretty much brought our Outerspace Week to a close! We're taking a field trip to the planetarium tomorrow, and that will take up the whole day.

I really love the summer rec program! I wish it could go all year!

The Most Frustrating Part

I love my summer job running a recreation program for kids with special needs. I love it! It is exhausting... it is the kind of job that takes over your whole life. If you're a staff member you can go to work and then leave at 3:00 and go home, but if you are one of the program leaders, your life consists pretty much of working, thinking about work, planning for work, shopping for supplies for work, or sleeping. But it really is fun... the kids are awesome, and I love the challenge of finding new and fun things for them to do.

If someone asked me what is my least favorite part of my job, I would probably have to say it is not the children at all, but the other adults. Not all of them. Some of the staff members I supervise are wonderful. Surprisingly, some of our best staff members are the ones who are still in high school themselves! They grew up doing volunteer work with kids with special needs, either alongside their parents or as part of school. They just have great levels of patience and love for the kids. You'd be amazed to see it.

Then there are the handful of staff members who think they are God's Gift to Special Recreation. They are the ones who are constantly criticizing us as program leaders, pointing out the things that we should, in their opinion, be doing differently. They are the ones who will scowl or glare at you because they don't like the activity you're leading, who have to question everything, and who seem to love one-upping each other at all times. You could say, "Last night a helicopter crashed through the roof of my house," and they'd say, "Well, I know all about that, because I was a helicopter pilot for ten years, so I crashed through roofs all the time, and I know that blah blah blah..."

There are the staff members who come ask you, "Would you like us to stack those chairs up, or leave them there?" with a smile on their face... but then there are the handful that will say, "Don't you think these chairs should be stacked up?" or "Shouldn't you have done that by now?" with an eye roll.

Usually these same staff members are the ones who are the roughest on the kids. With the special recreation program, the other leaders and I have stressed, from the beginning, that the kids are here for recreation and socialization. They are not here for school, or therapy. They get plenty of that. They are here to have a wonderful summer, with plenty of fresh air and exercise and new experiences and new buddies. We still want to have expectations for the kids, but we prefer to use natural consequences, or Love and Logic, rather than punishments and scolding.

Because some of the children would rather spend their entire days sitting in one spot playing with a water bottle, many of the staff members make a deal with the kids that they have to try every activity for five minutes, and if they don't like it they can choose something else. They'll even give the kid a sticker for each activity they try. It works like a charm... kids often end up enjoying themselves and staying for the entire activity, so they expand their horizons and get the most out of their rec program. But we always say, if the kids absolutely refuse to do an activity, don't force them. There is no point in restraining a child while hand-over-handing an art project with him. The child gets nothing out of it.

We ask the staff to avoid control battles. I once explained that if you find yourself saying, "I have to make him do this, at least for a second, because otherwise he wins," then you are in a control battle.

Here's an example for you to ponder. Let's say little Johnny is supposed to be getting ready to go swimming, but instead he's flopped down in the middle of the hallway and refusing to move.

A natural consequence would be something like, "If we go get ready quick, we'll have lots of time to swim. If we stay here, we'll run out of time!"

Or you could say, "Oh, you're choosing to spend your swimming time sitting in the hallway. That sounds kind of boring, but okay..." and then pretend to be very busy looking at a picture on the wall, until Johnny suddenly gets up and marches to the bathroom to change into his bathing suit.

Or maybe Johnny doesn't even like swimming, and you could say, "Johnny, do you want swimming, or do you want arts and crafts?" Because do we really need to force someone to go swimming? This is their recreation program, and part of recreation is getting to choose what you do.

Now here is how a few particular staff members handle it: "Johnny, get up, right now. I'm going to count to three, and if you don't get up, you lose snack time. One... two... three. Okay, no snack. Do you hear me, Johnny? I mean it! Get up! If you don't get up, I am going to call your mom and tell her you can't go on the field trip tomorrow. Okay, no field trip..." All of this said in a very angry, irritated voice. Of course, Johnny doesn't get up. And by the time five minutes has passed, Johnny has lost snack, the field trip, recess for the next three days, and every activity he enjoys other than lunch.

Anyways... I love my summer job so much, and I love most of the people I work with so much, that I often wish I could do this year round! But in order to do it full time, I'd have to get a law passed saying kids no longer have to go to school and can just do recreation day in and day out. I like it in some ways even more than teaching, because we get to do all fun things without any assessments or meetings or paperwork. And I think I am a pretty good supervisor to the staff members I supervise. I listen to them and am accommodating whenever they have special circumstances, like if they want to leave early to go to a job interview for a different job or if they want a break from working with the kid they've been assigned to. In return, they are hard workers, have great attitudes, and rarely miss work unexpectedly. At least, 98% of them are. But it is that irritable, eye-rolling, sighing, complaining 2% that make everyone's day a little more difficult than it needs to be.

I guess it is like that at any job, though, huh.

Snow In July

Trying to come up with some new themes for our recreation program this summer, I had the idea for a Winter Wonderland Week. I got the idea from the old "Christmas In July" parties that people sometimes used to have. Usually we have to stay away from holidays that are connected to specific religions, so I thought, what about doing winter-themed things? Last summer it was extremely hot, and our program is housed in a 1940's era building with no air conditioning, so I thought maybe doing wintery things would cool us off a little. Luckily it hasn't been that hot this summer... but we still had lots of fun!

How do you celebrate winter in July? Here are the things we did. (I even have pictures for some of them!)

Sensory activities... always important in a program for kids with special needs! I made several different sensory bins that we kept out all of the time. I filled one with Epson salt, and added some clear gems from Dollar Tree and some snowflake-shaped gems I found on Amazon. (It looked much better at the beginning of the week, but by the time I took this picture some of the kids had mixed some other random sensory things into it!)

We had two more bins that were filled with instant snow. I bought one package of "Grow Snow" for one, and it came out really nice... much softer and more powdery than most instant snows I've used. There wasn't a lot of it in the package, though, and I didn't have time to order another package. But I read that you could make a similar instant snow from the stuff that is found inside diapers! You just have to cut open the padding of a diaper and shake out the powdery stuff that is inside it. We opened up about 24 diapers to make this box of snow... after shaking the powder out, you add water and stir it up until it becomes white and fluffy. Who knew diapers could do that? Some of the staff didn't like this as much as the Grow Snow stuff, because it was a little more gelatiny. 

On one of the days, I also used the old sensory stand-by, shaving cream! I just called it snow cream. The kids loved it. Two of them actually got onto the table and tried to make snow angels in it. Luckily shaving cream is basically soap, so it didn't stain their clothes or anything! 

Activities: We did many throughout the week. Some I have photos of, and some I don't.
Snowman Bowling... I taped snowman faces to some water bottles that were filled with rice, taped a white table cloth down on the floor to represent snow, and used pool noodles to separate the lanes.

We played Pin The Nose On The Snowman! I think one kid cheated.

We played "Cold Snowball." I don't have a picture of that, but it is played exactly like Hot Potato, but we used a fabric snowball instead of a potato. I even got the snowball wet and put it in the freezer for a while before we played, so it was cold like a real snowball!

We had an indoor snowball fight. I shelled out nearly $30.00 for a set of Snowtime Anytime snowballs. It was worth it! They are soft but have a texture similar to real snow, We used one for the Cold Snowball Game also. I was a little worried that my kids, many of whom have autism spectrum disorders. wouldn't be too enthused about the snowball fight. I envisioned kids standing there looking lost, with snowballs in their hands. But most of the kids really loved it! I also added a rule that, if they got hit by a snowball, they had to turn around three times while saying "Snowman, snowman, snowman," which would get them back into the game. That way there were no "losers" or "winners," and everyone got to play for as long as they wanted to. 

The kids went "ice skating" in the gym. They stood with a paper plate under each foot and just slid around the gym. I wasn't there, but the person leading the activity said the kids enjoyed it... although they got exhausted fast!

We also went sledding indoors. Although I duck taped towels to the bottoms of sleds so that they wouldn't scratch the gym floors, they somehow scratched the gym floors anyways. Be warned. We had to move that activity to the hallways. 

We usually do a cooking activity once a week. This week, the kids made banana snowmen. This was a quick and simple activity. You just take three thick slices of banana and put them on a skewer, the long way so that if you looked at it from the front you would see three circles on top of each other, like a snowman. Pretzel rods served as arms. The kids decorated their snowmen with M&Ms and chocolate chips. I even found candy eyeballs at the grocery store! The kids seemed to like this activity, AND they ate the banana slices as well as the candy! If you are a stickler for healthy foods, you could substitute raisins for M&Ms.

During many of the activities, we listened to snow-themed songs, to get into the mood. It was a challenge finding winter songs that weren't actually about Christmas, but I managed to come up with a decent playlist. It included classics like Jingle Bells, Suzy Snowflake, Sleigh Ride, Walking In A Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow, Baby Its Cold Outside, and Frosty the Snowman, plus some newer songs I found on Amazon like Ingrid Michaelson's "Winter Song." 

I think that is pretty much it for our Winter Wonderland Week! I usually love planning arts and crafts, but there are two high school girls in charge of the arts and crafts aspect of our program. They tend to choose projects that involve adding some embellishments to an already-nearly-finished project (like gluing on eyes and sequins to snowmen that were put together for them ahead of time) whereas I prefer more open-ended projects that allow for creativity. 

Anyways, I think I will probably use at least a few of these activities during the actual winter season of my school year teaching job. Of course I will put a learning spin on them. For instance you could put sight words on the snowman bowling pins and have kids read the words they knock down, or have kids ice skate around as they "read the room." 

Time for me to take a nap now... for the rest of the night! 

Nature Sounds Guessing Game

As I mentioned before in my Obligatory Introduction Post, until school starts at the end of August, I am leading a recreational program for children with special needs. I wanted to share some of the activities with you, because they might come in handy, and because I don't want this blog to have to just sit quietly and wait for me for the next six weeks.

At the program, this week is our Nature Week. One of the activities I came up with is a Nature Sounds Guessing Game. I used SoundBible to download 16 sounds that people might here in nature. Since we live in the Pacific Northwest, I concentrated specifically on sounds the children might hear around their homes, or while hiking or camping. I then printed and cut out pictures representing each of the nature sounds, and glued them onto a board.

Next, I taped an index card over each picture, making it like a flap that I could lift up to see the picture underneath. I numbered the cards.

I also printed out a sheet of paper with small versions of all of the pictures, which I didn't take a photo of.

To play, the kids will be divided into teams. When it is their turn, a team will choose a number. I will play the corresponding recording for them, and they'll try to guess what it is. If they get it right, I uncover the picture and that team gets a point. If they get it wrong, it is the next team's turn.

To differentiate it, I will have the sheet of paper with smaller pictures on it, so the kids can point to the picture they think it is. We don't have any kids with hearing impairments, but we do have a bunch who are nonverbal.

It is a simple game. We'll see how well it goes. They're also going to play Four Corners, but instead of numbering the corners, the corners will be labeled "forest, field, river, mountain." Stay tuned for more exciting ideas for amusing a group of children!

The Obligatory Introduction Post

Hi! My name is Angel, and I have just gotten my first actual teaching position as a special ed learning support teacher. 

Not that I am a spring chicken of any sort. I am actually in my thirties (although nobody would guess it from looking at me) and have had a lot of random experience with children already. I started out working in child care centers when I was just a teenager. I served in AmeriCorps as a fulltime volunteer working with very young children with severe behavioral and emotional disabilities... these were preschoolers who could not be around scissors because they'd try to stab you. After completing a year of AmeriCorps, I worked for a few years as a teacher's assistant in a special education school, before deciding to go to college to become a special education teacher myself. 

I had a lot of obstacles that got in my way of actually becoming a teacher, once I made up my mind to do it. First of all, I was already in my twenties by then, and living on my own, which made it a little harder than it would probably be for your typical nineteen-year-old college student. Second of all, my own ADHD and autism spectrum disorder made it harder for me to keep both oars in the water while going to school full time and working part time. I ended up going to school part time while working part time, which doubled the amount of time it took me to graduate. But I persevered, despite some people suggesting that I choose an easier career or look for a job that wouldn't require a college education. When I finished student teaching, graduated, and got a teaching degree, it was a huge accomplishment for me!

Unfortunately, I didn't find a teaching job right away. My convoluted transcript, which showed me making my way through school at the pace of a snail for over eight years, probably discouraged school districts from taking me seriously. I worked as a paraprofessional for a year, but was really frustrated and discouraged when the "old school" teachers and principal I worked with didn't allow me to use the techniques I'd learned in college. I'd learned about differentiating instruction, universal design for learning, and positive behavior management techniques for working with children with ADHD and sensory processing disorders. At the school I worked at, they thought all that was stuff and nonsense, and scolded me for being too "gentle" with the children. 

After that I worked as a substitute teacher for a while. My mother's cancer diagnosis caused me to postpone my search for a teaching job, because I wanted to be able to take time off at the drop of a hat if I had to. Substitute teaching is great for that. Eventually I met a little boy with serious behavioral challenges who needed a one-to-one assistant, and I gave up substitute teaching in order to take a full time job working with him. It was that job with that little boy, a job that was challenging, exhausting, fulfilling, heartbreaking and joyful all at once, that helped me to get my first "real" teaching position. I start at the end of August, and I can't wait! I started this blog as a way of reflecting on my experiences and also learning from other teachers all over the USA and even the world. 

For now, I am leading a summer recreational program for children with special needs. I thought I'd use this blog to share some of the activities I've been putting together for that program. Otherwise, this blog would be pretty boring for the next few weeks!

I hope you will come back and read more as I tackle this new adventure.