Gina from The Autism Helper shows two quick classroom tweaks: wrapping food in Velcro to turn cutting into sensory play, and hiding Language Lotto pieces in toy trucks to boost engagement. Both take seconds to set up and build fine motor and language skills.
Hi everyone, this is Gina from The Autism Helper. I am here today to show you 2 different ways to spice up some of your maybe everyday activities and just show you a way that you can differentiate things depending on student interest level in order to gain more skills and complete more tasks. So, for example, the first one I have is this really cool little food cutting activity with the Velcro. Now, this may not be as appealing to some kids just doing this, I love this because they can expressively label the object, um, the food, or receptively. But for some kiddos, you might have to add a little bit more interest level to this. This may not be as appealing. So something I did really quickly, literally just took me 2 seconds, was wrap up some of the pieces, and then they're way more fun to open. Then you're working on fine motor skills. You can work on core language—open, my turn, your turn, so on. And then they can complete the activity with labeling receptively or expressively what the food is and then cutting it for some more fine motor and just gross motor fun activities. So that's a way to quickly increase the interest level in a simple activity. The next one is my favorite game that I talk about a lot. It's called Language Lotto by Lakeshore. I love this game so much, so many great things about it. Not all the pieces are capable of this, but I did find these fun colorful trucks at the Dollar Tree a long time ago, and I've used them for so many different activities. So I just put the pieces that match with the board inside the trucks because it is way more fun to open up the trucks and pull out the item and then match it instead of just matching it to the board. And it's a great way to mix it up if, if your kiddo is showing like a little bit of resistance with doing this type of activity. So mix it up, put objects in a bag, put them into sand, put them into a shoebox, anything you want, and that little, uh, little trick will help spice up the interest level with your kiddos.
