ECC Family Project: Grocery Shopping at a Food Bank

Then my teacher lightbulb switched on. I quickly saw all the ECC skills that could easily be infused into this idea and I knew that I had another family project for you. I have designed this idea for children of all abilities and families of all types. 

Here's another great Expanded Core family project: grocery shopping for a food bank. I'll be honest, this is another idea that comes straight from my own life. I read an article about our local food banks and there was a profile about the families who are receiving their support. I was quite struck by this as it reminded me that for most of my childhood I was a recipient of support. I decided to look up their needed items. I made a commitment that every time I go grocery shopping this year, I will pick items to support the local food bank. 

Part one--food bank research 

 As a family, look up your local food bank and learn about it. You can be as detailed as you need to meet your child where they are. Learn about what food banks are and what needs they have. I also encourage you to have your child call the food bank and conduct an interview. You will find out what specific needs your local bank has and it works conversation skills. 

•  For moderate to typically developing students, have them use their tech skills and go online. Have them do the search on a device. I suggest a laptop so that everyone can read along with them (but you do what works for you!). 
• For symbolic level students, use real life simple pictures of a building. Use simplified language ("This is a food bank."). You can go to the site https://www.remove.bg/ and it will remove the background of a visually chaotic picture for free!

Gather your information from your research. You can have your child be the speaker (they call the food bank),  the researcher (they go online) or the secretary (they write the details and the shopping list). You can assign these responsibilities out to members of your family (this teaches career education). 

Find the food bank address in your community. Have a quick discussion about the location of the food bank (after you researched the address). Consider these questions: is the food bank in a residential place? Is it in a strip mall? Go on a map and look at the street. Is it located on a busy street or main road or a side street? Does it have a stoplight controlled intersection. This quick discussion infuses orientation and mobility skills. 

Part two-grocery shopping skills 

You have two options for this part. You can go to the grocery store or you can order groceries online. 

For both options, start with a grocery list. You can have this in Braille, large print or pictures. 

• Option A:You can have a bit of fun with this part if you have the time. Start with your grocery list and play a type of the price is right with it. I do this a lot with students and it is super fun. Ask everyone to make a guess of how much items cost. This lets you know how much knowledge your child has about money skills. Then move onto grocery shopping. 
• Option B: get right to grocery shopping. For in person grocery shopping, infuse AT skills by using an app such as Seeing AI or Be My Eyes. Divide your family into teams and work on the list together. Do not just put your child at the back of the cart and drag them around the store. Keep your child actively participating by giving them a specific task. For symbolic level students, give them pictures of what they are looking for. Let them put the item in the cart. 

For online shopping, turn JAWS on so everyone knows what's going on. Your child may be inexperienced with online shopping so be partners in this effort. **If you feel overwhelmed, do this: think of one thing your child CAN do for this and one thing you STOP doing for this. It will give you some direction.

For both in person or online shopping, the payment section is a good place for your child to be actively engaged. You can use paper bills--more ideal for students who have multiple impairments or teach about using a card. I try to make sure that my students have both the card reader experience at a self- checkout and with a cashier. Go at a dead time so you don't feel rushed. 

Last but never least, do the best you can! I've had so many grand ideas fail miserably when executed in real time. The focus is a family activity that helps the community. Pay attention to how your child does--are they way off with prices? Do they seem to not have strong internet skills? Do they not know much about grocery stores? Make some notes. Then call your teacher of students with vision impairments or OM instructor to work a plan to develop these skills. Pay attention to yourself--how much did you really help your child during these activities? Did you overpower during the lesson? All children can do something. Step back and let them do things before you jump in to help (easier said than done!). 

Can you imagine if just twenty families did this activity? We would help our local communities so much! 

Teach the Expanded Core Curriculum by Writing Letters to North Pole Friends

Writing letters to Santa Claus is a very popular activity for this time of year. However, you can include a lot more kids and A LOT more Expanded Core skills if you put a twist on this popular activity and write letters to North Pole friends. 
This twist give you a handful more opportunities for skills. Here are some ideas:
Learn about the post office and writing letters free matter for the blind

Addressing envelopes (almost a lost art at this time)

Learn how to write a letter with a greeting and a closing. 

Developing and practicing a signature. 

Make choices about the friend you want to write to (I gave my students Santa, Rudolf or Frosty) and what you want to say or write to that person

Teach about weather (what type of weather do you think the North Pole has?)

Writing to North Pole friends as opposed to just Santa means you can do letter correspondence into January (feel free to pick other North Pole friends).

Give different writing prompts (It doesn't just have to be about what you want for a holiday present--you can write about different things).

Literacy, literacy, literacy! Lots of of opportunities for literacy in a project like this.

I found these super cute mailboxes at Target (there's even a light in the outside). We set up the North Pole mailbox in the office with our secretary because that's where the mail is delivered at our school. However, if you are doing this virtual or just at home as a parent you can use your own mailbox. 

I provided students with three choices for their letters. Santa, Rudolf or Frosty. I whipped up these images on Canva. Notice that I used strong contrast for the pictures to make them friendly for low vision and CVI students. My amazing para took the next leg and put the tactile items on it. We LOVE the APH Carousel of Textures kit but you can also hit up a Joanns or Michaels for some tactile paper. She didn't do the whole picture tactile rather just the critical features of each to highlight them. 

Our students could write in any writing mode that worked for them (and then received a letter in return in that mode). We received letters in Braille, large print and pictures. Now this is the cool part, we had our high school students write the Braille replies. So if you are a teacher with older students, this could be a fun project that your high school students do for younger students on your caseload! 

I wanted to include pictures of how we did the picture letters because sometimes that is tricky for folks to know how to do. The above picture is the letter from a student that uses pictures. There are Braille labels over the large print with large clear pictures. We returned his letter in the same format and signed it from Santa with the same Santa picture (plus tactile beard) as the signature. 

Now we started this by writing letters to North Pole friends (again, I meant for this to be inclusive for students who do not celebrate Christmas) but can you see where you can keep this going in the new year? You can continue to use actual letters or you can keep practicing and learn how to transfer this to digital communication such as an email or have a lot of fun and move to Twitter!

Teachers, you can make this as a kit and send it to families and then work together virtually. Parents, you can do this in your home. It's an accessible activity that practically every child can participate in. Happy holidays! 

 

ECC Chill Pill Lesson

Happy back to school friends! I know it is crazy right now but we can still provide meaningful Expanded Core instruction for our students. Check out this fun idea: make chill pills with students. Huh? I'm sure you have seen this fun idea floating around on Pinterest or other craft places. You can take this fun idea and infuse a TON of ECC learning and skills practice for students of various abilities. 

 I referenced our ECC assessments (you should do this, too!)
Here's a few of my ideas of how you can infuse ECC learning:

Community learning: what is a pharmacy? learn about employees that work there--what are their titles? Research different types of pharmacies and locations. Plot a bus/walking route. What are items you can get a pharmacy? Over the counter vs prescription? Safety measures with medication

Social/emotional: review why someone would need to take a "chill pill", what does it mean to "chill out". You can review emotions and healthy ways to manage them and express them. I also like to do a mental health toolbox where students learn different ways to manage mental health and then select ideas to build their own coping skills. 

Independent living skills: how do you manage your personal medication? Hygiene is another great topic at this time. How do you open and store medication safely? Use technology to read medication labels. 

Now it's important to remind you that you want to have intentional, meaningful instruction so ponder how you will present this and work through material with students. Don't shove all this information into one lesson! The bonus part is the actual chill pills. We used a mix of Skittles and M&Ms. Another bonus ILS is to review favorite snacks, prices, location of these items, etc. Allow students to mix it up and select their own "pill combinations". 

These make great gifts for others. You may have to stuff them with pre-packaged candies for Covid safety but all in all, it will still work. Last but not least, the label lesson! Teach students what is on a prescription label. We had print and then Braille labels for students. Big shout out to my secretary who assembled these ones! She did a great job. Our students loved them. They were part of our back to school for our residential students. 

Would you like the label to make your own? I'm happy to share! Email me at robbin.keating@gmail.com and I'll get you the template. 

 

ECC Family Project 2

I quite possibly think that this new series is becoming my favorite during this quarantine time. Why? Because I am a mom and I know first-hand how hard it is to manage life! This is a project that kiddos with multiple impairments or typically developing can do with their siblings. 

You only need THREE ingredients and a popsicle mold--easy peasy! I bought these molds in the Dollar Spot at Target awhile back. You can also probably find them at Dollar Tree or order them for a minimal cost. My youngest (she's 6 years old) did the project with minimal support from me. 

The other bonus? It wasn't a marathon long project. We were done (including set up, preparation and clean up) in 15 minutes. Boom! The recipe was a find from Pinterest. Here it is: http://poofycheeks.com/2014/06/jell-o-popsicle-recipe/. Now that we have discovered this one, Pinterest has been awesome to find me a dozen more variations. 

A couple of important notes for maximizing your total Expanded Core learning: 

1. Your child is the one who should be in charge of the set up & clean up (not just the actual cooking). They should pull out the pot for the water, measuring cup, bowl and spoon. This is the part that may take a few extra minutes if they are new to the kitchen scene. Don't do this part with siblings as they tend to be well meaning but give away the answers. Normally I would suggest that your child also buy the Jell-O but we are in a new normal here. Have a quick (seriously--QUICK) discussion on the different flavors of Jell-O if they are new to Jell-O. Talk about the cost (Jell-O and store brand is cheap!).

2. Consider contrast. Notice that I selected dark blue. It is easy to see. If your child has no vision, consider using a tray with all of the ingredients to keep things organized. 

3. If your child has limitations such as multiple impairments, think about how they can actively participate. That's different than being totally independent. Can they hold the box? Open it? Can they stir? You can discuss hot and cold, empty and full concepts easily. Are they very limited with their hands? No worries--go hand-under-hand with them. Not sure how? Watch this super quick and awesome video: https://www.wsdsonline.org/hand-under-hand/ (watch Daniel Makes A Smoothie). 

4. Let them use the stove! The easiest thing you can do on a stove is boil water. Highlight how you know water is boiling without seeing it. You can hear it! 

5. Put your child in charge of cleaning up! That includes wiping down the counter. 

I have to admit that I was a little nervous about how my little one was going to pour the mix into the containers. I have a small one cup measuring cup. We simply dunked the cup in the mix and then poured it. She did it all by herself. ECC bonus skills: pouring! No vision? No worries! Don't let your child put their finger in (we do discourage it but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do). Try having them feel the outside of the container while they pour. The water is hot and you can feel it fill up the container. BEFORE they pour have them indicate with their finger where the top of the mold is. This way you know that they know where the top is. 

Freeze for a few hours and enjoy! I didn't add as much sugar as the recipe called for but you can do whatever works for your family. NOTE: for kids with multiple impairments, really play up the temperature aspects of this. There are repeated opportunities to talk about hot and cold. You could easily make a new recipe with a new flavor each week. Once you master these, you can rank up and try the fruit ones with fresh fruit and coconut milk. Go for it! 

Expanded Core Family Project

Hi everyone, here is a quick and easy Expanded Core FAMILY activity! Make sunshine cards for patients in the hospital. I got this idea because it dawned on me that people weren't easily able to visit loved ones who are sick. The great thing about the ECC is that sooooo many ideas match ECC skills. Here's a fun and easy way that the whole family can do an activity together that also gives you a ton of ECC learning.
Below is the text from post: 

Get a pack of cards. Tip:  I used some blank cards from Dollar Tree (only 50 cents a card!)

ECC spotlight: 

talk about the price of cards, purpose of cards, location of cards in a store

Research thoughtful messages for cards. Type or print messages for cards.

ECC spotlight: 

use assistive tech to do research for messages. practice typing skills!

Call a local hospital to find out how you can drop off cards.

ECC spotlight: 

research the address of the hospital--discuss landmarks, find out if there is a bus route or careers at a hospital 

We also bought some sticker since we knew that there were some kids who would receive this. We downloaded free lunchbox notes from Pinterest. Note: We put these items into a bag. Our original thought was to put them inside the cards but since we wanted every item to be safe for patients, we put them in a bag with a post-it for hospital staff to put inside cards after they were finished with their quarantine.

 We took our research of get well notes and wrote them in the cards. The message says: Dear Friend, There are times that we need to know that people care about us. This is one of those times and I happen to be one of those people. Hope you feel better soon!

 We know our parents have a lot going on with "the new normal".  Anyway that we can include things for the whole family can help a lot! I hope this gave you some fun ideas!

ECC PTA

Join us for our May ECC PTA on Tuesday, May 21! This month our topic is learning all about augmentative and alternative communication better known as AAC for students with multiple impairments and blindness. This is another free meeting for our parents, related servers and teachers. We are very happy to have Breana Cannon as our special guest presenter. Breana is a speech language pathologist and also serves on our augmentative communication team. She has a fantastic understanding of  students with multiple impairments. Read this post late? No worries! You didn't miss out. You can still access the recorded webinar by registering:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdMdsZtaqYrpVrGtpHxt7uNKSo6aWBIUqw9ozkyR1Z4wkX_dQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Spring & Easter ECC Activities

Happy spring! Spring season bring holidays like Easter and a lot of fun opportunities for Expanded Core instruction. Check out some quick, fun and easy to do ECC spring activities. The bonus: you can do these for Easter, too!

Let's start with Easter. One of the most difficult parts of traditional Easter activities is the egg hunt. Many people have adopted the beeping eggs or using balloons on strings. Those are great ideas and I have done them. The problem I ran into with the balloons is that it ended up being super windy and the balloons were blowing around everywhere--gah! The beeping eggs are nice but what do you do if you have students with hearing impairments, in wheelchairs or have under developed sound location skills? That's what I was thinking about this year when putting together our Spring Carnival. 

I was in Walmart gathering supplies when I saw a clearance bin with these colorful, soft and lightweight "egg looking" pillows---yes! They were only $2.50--score! I purchased a handful of these pillows. I knew that they would be perfect "eggs" for many of my students. They are easy to see, fun to touch and lightweight to hold. Yes! They were such a hit! The students used them in so many ways. I made sure that I bought a red one for some of my CVI students. I have many students who use gait trainers, walkers, etc. Check out my Instagram--9MoreThanCore to watch how some of my students used it. 

I also purchase "large print" eggs for $1 because they are easy to see.

That wasn't the only egg hunt we had. Who say you have to have just one egg hunt when we have students of all different abilities and interests?! My kids have participated in lots of family egg hunts where each child is assigned a color or a sticker for their designated egg. I took that idea and put my ECC thinking cap on. Again, what is an egg hunt that my students can fully interact with? 

I assigned students based on small groups (small classroom sizes) a designated color egg. The big eggs were hung on walls for the hunt. Each classroom looks for multiple eggs of the same color that are mounted to the wall. Each classroom is designated a spring decoration (i.e. bee, flower, polka dot) and will decorate their eggs as they find them. The decorations were in buckets. Students matched their color to their egg and bucket. We used Braille labels on both buckets and eggs for literacy purposes and for students who have no vision.

It worked out great! Students still did an egg hunt but we packed in a lot of other bonus skills. I considered popular IEP goals (scanning, matching, fine motor skills) and infused them into this and the other activities for meaningful instruction. They were also easy and inexpensive to make! I used poster board from Dollar Tree. I bought a white poster board and used a shiny wrapping paper for one color. They were nice and bright and easy to see. (We laminated them so we can use them again!). We used die cuts for decorations and painters tape for easy application. 

Another fun activity was the gardening station. This was a mix of live plants, artificial plants/flowers and gardening tools. I headed to Walmart nursery clearance rack. I wanted crocus flowers because they are super fragrant. I also nabbed some oregano and parsley for their scent and textures. 

I found a great idea from Pinterest for the sensory play component. I picked up some black beans and filled some containers to have "dirt". Bright color artificial flowers provided great contrast. 

Target Dollar Spot had some great cheap finds! I purchased kids gardening gloves, gardening tools and fun rocks. They also had some fun carrots and veggies that were soft. You can easily open the seam and fill them with some weights to give them a little bit more weight for sensory feedback. (We had the same idea for the spring friends!).  Dollar Tree had these awesome carrot eggs. I filled them with different amounts of beans for shaker eggs. I found a super cute bee and lady bug decoration from At Home which added to the garden table.

I always love having a motor activity. I created some motor movements that all my students could do (wheelchairs, supported standers or independent standers). I also added numbers on dowels. Students selected a motor skill and a number. Our PE teacher ran the activity. 

We had a spring dress up station with all kinds of fun items. Why? We had a parade! A parade infused some fun ECC skills. It was fun to watch students dress up with all kinds of decorations. We worked some fun social skills with smiling and waiving in our parade (very simple parade so we can focus on skills). 

 A lot of my students enjoy music so the spring friends table was just the table for them! I found these fun spring friends that dance and move. I also went to the baby section and found super soft bunnies and a large turtle. Again, you can open the seams and add some weight to provide more sensory feedback. 

 You don't need to save these activities for Easter. These are spring activities you can do do throughout spring! Plus, buying these right after Easter gives you a nice savings to your wallet. 

Learn About Community Partners Using the Expanded Core

I just completed my latest ECC kit, Community Partners and I am so excited about it. One of my preschool teachers wanted a kit to help with teaching about community partners. Let me show what I came up with!

First, let me go right to our assessment tools and resources from the Expanded Core Curriculum. This way I can infuse skills in every aspect. I always go to my ECC tools first so I can have a clear picture of what skills, concepts, etc. I need to teach. I hit up the Independent Living Skills Assessment (ILSA) and Elementary Concepts from TSBVI (see earlier posts on using Elementary Concepts). There was a whole unit on community partners in Elementary Concepts so I copied the section for my teachers to use. Lots of good ideas for both core and Expanded Core learning (with art, music, writing, etc ideas). I also found some fun color and cut headbands from Totschooling.net (I signed up for free and they have all kinds of things). 

Next I hit up Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers to find some ideas and resources that general education is using. Remember, we always want to be in alignment with core and general education because it keeps our students included in their classrooms. Plus, TPT has GREAT finds that are pretty cheap. I love TPT!

I found these awesome movement cards for $3.00 on TPT. They are available in large and small sizes (or in large print as I like to think of it...). Look at how great these cards are!! I had my intermediate grade students do all the Braille for me (bonus ECC instruction as we discussed as they brailled...). *You can't see the Braille labels very well but they are on there!*
I also went and found the props that go with each card. For example, a newspaper, wrench, toothbrush and cut up hose. Now we have meaningful tactual items for the movement. 

I happen to have some preschool items that I purchased for my early thoughts with dramatic play with community partners. You can easily hit up a Kid to Kid or other kids consignment shop for some items. I also purchased some from Lakeshore. Kids love to dress up for dramatic play (plus it's another ECC bonus because you can work on dressing skills!)

We added Braille labels to all the print labels on the dramatic play clothes. Add a little super glue (carefully!) so that the Braille labels stick long term. 

We packaged up the costumes into large ziploc bags and logged the contents. I like to do this to keep track of things. We are not done yet! We still have more items in our ECC kit. 

I also found this fun idea from Pinterest to build a photo town. Here's the link: http://www.toddlerapproved.com/2015/03/build-around-town-photo-wall.html.
There's lots of good ideas in this post! There are accessibility settings on phones (iPhones for sure) that allows students with vision impairments to take pics with feedback. Go around your town and take pictures of your town to build your photo town. See the post for more ideas. There are so many good ones that are totally doable for our students! Extend your ECC learning by visiting these places and taking your pictures there OR it can be ECC homework for students to do with their families. 

I decided to have some starter photos for our town so I Googled some free pics of things and made labels (with Braille on it--can't see in picture). It was easy peasy to make the board. Bonus ECC instruction: you can work in spatial skills directions because you can discuss top/botton, left/right and count squares and use systematic search patterns. 

The last part of our kit has to do with signs in the community. We included a number of directional signs and this real working stoplight to talk about navigating around our community. This stoplight totally works! I found it at Hobby Lobby on sale for $40! It's got metal on it so it has an authentic feel. Plus it's great for students who have no vision who always hear people talking about a stop light but have never 'seen' it before. 

There is SO much learning that you can do with this ECC Community Partners kit! Other ideas include: asking members of the community to come to your classroom OR scheduling a visit to their location and build an experience book based on the community partners you learned about. Just make sure you hit up our ECC resources to see all the skills from play to compensatory skills that can be included. ILSA is a great tool for this! 

See you in the community!!