Creating a Calming Center in Your Classroom: A Guide for Special Education Teachers

Special education classrooms can greatly benefit from having a designated calming center where students can go to self-regulate when feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. This calm down space provides a safe and quiet environment for students to regain their composure. Here's how you can create an effective calming center that suits your classroom and your students' needs.

Setting Up Your Calming Center

Start by identifying a corner in your classroom that can be transformed into a calming center. Use items like bookshelves, dividers, tables, or desks to section off the area and create a cozy nook. If you have the space, consider adding comfortable seating options like a bean bag chair and a soothing bubble lamp. Additionally, incorporate smaller fidgets and visual aids to help students calm down and self regulate when feeling frustrated or overwhelmed

5 Ways to Help Teachers Remember to Take Attendance

Mornings are so busy, the last thing most teachers are thinking about is submitting attendance when there are students to say hello to, notes to read, lesson details to finalize, kids to help, etc! So, how can a teacher actually remember to take attendance? 

Here are some tried and true ideas from seasoned teachers who shared their strategies on the BSE Facebook page. Check them out and let us know which one ends up working best for you!

A More Inclusive Halloween: Supports for Special Needs while Trick or Treating

Halloween is always so much fun for kids, because, well, candy...and special needs kids are no exception!

Here's a few ways to help individuals with special needs have an enjoyable trick-or-treating experience this year: including multiple AAC supports, a free social story, links to wheelchair cover costumes, teal pumpkin treats, and more! 

How to Say Trick or Treat for Non-Verbal Kids

Hopefully, most people are kind enough to pass out candy to every trick-or-treater who comes to their door with their bag open regardless of whether or not they say trick or treat, but it's also fun to be able to participate in saying "trick or treat".

Here are a few unique ways that non-verbal kids can say trick-or-treat!

Teaching Money Skills in Special Education

When teaching life skill math, make sure that what you are teaching is able to be transferred to life outside of the classroom. Seriously, you don't want to waste your time (and your students' time) on skills that won't be used in the real world! 

One of the easiest ways to do this when teaching money is to make sure the materials in your classroom are realistic.

Realistic Cash Register

I don't know why, but every "play" cash register I have found has spots for 3 bills. Why? I wish I knew! Pretty sure all normal cash registers have 4 (and maybe some bank specific ones have more). So when working with money in your classroom, buy a cash register drawer (amazon affiliate link) to use instead of a play cash register. It is just about the same price as the play version from Lakeshore learning!

Another great option is to see if anyone is donating an old cash register. Ask your local Buy Nothing group on Facebook.

Use Pretend Money...but Realistic Money

Obviously, the real thing is the best thing, but keeping cash in the classroom might not be the best option. Don't buy the play money that is all the same color. 

Students with special needs, they need something that is closer to the real thing like these ones (amazon affiliate link). Plus the color (like on our real dollars) makes it easier to identify which bill is which, which is especially helpful for students who aren't recognizing numbers.

5 NO PREP Resources for St. Patrick's Day and March Special Education

Are you feeling the drag of the school year by this point? Let me make it a little bit easier for you by showing you these resources that you can click, print, and use without any additional prep work or modification for your special education students.

Sound good? Here are 5 resources for March and St. Patrick's Day that are differentiated and ready to go!

Thankful Turkey Journal and Craft Activity for Special Education

The act of gratitude is important for everyone, and that includes our students with disabilities. It might be hard for our non-verbal students to express what they are thankful for, so I created these differentiated thankful turkeys to help!

Symbol Support

With this thankful turkey resource, students will be able to use the symbols to help them think about and choose the things they are thankful for. Then they can paste them on a turkey or on a journal to show what they are thankful for.