Gina from The Autism Helper shares low-tech strategies for keeping classroom materials clean during COVID. Use labeled sanitizing baskets, laminate visuals so they're wipeable, make multiple copies to avoid sharing, and collect used items throughout the day to sanitize at the end.
Hi everyone, it's Gina from The Autism Helper. I'm here today to hopefully share a few ideas that I've come up with about keeping things clean during COVID if you're returning to the classroom. I have no clue what my district is doing at this point. I have no idea what health guidelines are going to look like, so this is just my own personal— I'm not a doctor or a scientist or anything by all means, so I have no idea what we're actually going to be required to do, but here are just some things that I came up with that can still allow you to do tasks, keep things clean quickly, and just try and keep everything a little bit more sanitized. Especially in a preschool classroom, we have so much stuff. So obviously that's going to be a much smaller list this year and the amount of things that we can bring out, but we still want to be able to engage with books. And I am 100% still having all my visuals. That's a non-negotiable for me. I just have to be a little bit more creative. So for example, a basket with a "Needs to be sanitized" little Post-it in it. I know I like to make everything cute too, but at this point, you know, it's one more thing that has to be cleaned. So I don't think it has to be anything fancy. And just at the end of the day or throughout the day, I was thinking that our staff could just toss in picture symbols as we use them, you know. So if they're putting it in a basket, during snack or break, maybe we're going around and just dumping them all in here so that we know at the end of the day that this is the basket that needs to be sanitized. Or even if you don't get to it that day, you know not to use those visuals again. Make tons of copies of everything. I mean, most everything I use is laminated or wipeable anyway in preschool, but just in case. So little baskets throughout your place. Okay. I also was thinking that obviously in early childhood we're reading lots of books and we want our kids to interact and label. And I know we have to socially distance and so the opportunities may not be as many, but this book is like kind of— it's definitely a wipeable surface. It's not like a paper page. It's those thick board. So this would be able to be wiped off pretty easily, but if not, or if we're you know, we're reading the book and I want someone to come up and touch something or label it. I think these page protectors are going to be my friend. So just put it right over the page and have the child come up and touch, you know, milk or pizza. And obviously now this is contaminated or could be. So maybe you're just going to have one child come up or, hey, you take that, toss it in that basket. You get a whole box of those sheet protectors. You can easily wipe them off at the end of the day. So that was one other idea. And another thing I'm thinking is, you know, testing or just in general getting baseline assessments or activities. Again, these page protectors I think are going to be our friends this year. I can easily wipe this off and sanitize in between students if I'm still testing kids. It'll take a little extra prep in the beginning, but you know, we're teachers, we're so used to doing that and accommodating anyway. Then I just made it front to back. I just put a little cardstock in between here, separated them that way I can say, you know, touch, touch car, touch french fries, touch pizza. So just a few ideas for you, and I'll go over some other things. Good luck everyone this year!
