Who is prepping more work boxes this summer? I just love getting new ideas, especially for our older life skill students!
Christina Bailey, a transition life skill teacher, offered to share a bunch of her work boxes on my blog! Thank you Christina! Christina works with transition aged students (19-26 years old) with severe cognitive and/or health impairments. Her school serves students from multiple school districts within the county who learn best in an alternative placement.
You all probably know how much I love making task boxes for my work task station from materials that I can find laying around at home or in my classroom. Free is always best!
BUT...there is something about the ease of Amazon (Dear Amazon Prime, just take all my money already!), and time is valuable, so if you need some quick new ideas, here's a few of favorite work tasks that you can find on Amazon! (The following links provided are affiliate links)
I had a similar set of nuts and bolts in my classroom and highly recommend these!
My independent work box station is one of my favorite activities for my students. It's amazing to watch them grow more and more independent and begin to work on these tasks all by themselves. Also, my students find so much satisfaction and pride in being able to do tasks on their own tool! Plus, I know a lot of classrooms are short on aides. After teaching your students how to use a work task station, you shouldn't even need any aides to run it so you can utilize them where needed (just obviously with someone keeping an eye on things in case a student needs redirection!).
What kind of supplies do I need? Shoeboxes (I got 30 of them at the dollar store), labels and schedules, and random things you can probably find in your classroom or at the dollar store to create the tasks! If you need more space and have small tasks, you can use index card holders (for task cards) or magazine file boxes (for file folders)
I absolutely love using task cards for my special education students. They are easy to store, easy to use, and great for practicing a wide variety of skills! They can be used during direct instruction, for independent work, and in TEACCH / work boxes. Plus, I've created my task cards to be used for non-readers as well as readers so they can be used by any students in my classroom who are working on those skills.
I have a range of money task cards, great for my higher level students. And I have functional life skill cards, great for both low to high students, including simple concepts such as male or female and more complicated concepts, such as determining if food goes in the cabinet, freezer, or fridge.
Check out this video to see all of my task card sets and to hear about how I use them in my classroom.
Here's all of the task card topics that I currently use! Click on the picture to check out each task card set.
Want them all? I have two great money saving options for you!!
Buy all 9 (non-money task cards) in this HUGE BUNDLE!
Interested in the 4 money task cards? They are bundled HERE.
(Australian money task cards are also available here.)
Do you use task cards in your classroom? Do you have another idea for task cards? I'd love to help you out, so let me know what you need. I'm sure my students would benefit from it as well!
I'm teaming up with Life Over C's to help bring ideas of how you can be creative with your crafty materials in your classroom. I have used a lot of craft supplies in my work boxes especially, because sometimes you just have to get creative with what you have!
Work Box #1 with Pipe Cleaners: Fine motor and color match.
I don't think this one needs much explanation but it's great for simple fine motor of stringing on beads and also matching the color of the beads to the pipe cleaners.
Work Box #2 with Pipe Cleaners: Counting 1-10 and fine motor.
Very similar to the task above, the student strings on beads, matching the colors, but also needs to string on the correct number of beads according to the flag on the top. The visual below helps students who need assistance counting.
Work Box #3 with Pipe Cleaners: Packaging and Counting to 5.
Students need to put 5 "fries", aka cut up pipe cleaners, into each fry bag. Print the visual from this post here. I include the visual for students who need additional support counting or remembering when to stop and put the fries in the bags.
Sometimes you have to practice grocery shopping without going to the store. Our official grocery store community trip won't be until January, but we will be practicing our grocery shopping skills, specifically shopping from a list, all year long!
One way we do this is through a simulated grocery shopping experiences.
Bookshelf Grocery Store: I created a mini shopping experience on a bookshelf. We have a variety of empty food boxes and containers. My first thought was to make mini departments and have a "refrigerated' section...but I haven't had time to be that awesome yet. :)
I created two levels of shopping lists, one including pictures and the other with only words. Each list has 3-4 items on it. I taped a folder with the directions written on it and each level goes in one of the two pockets.
Students will take a shopping bag, fill it up with items on their list, and then put the list in the bag and move to the next one. I have students complete it this way so that we can check to see if they got the correct items. If you can find the same items I used, feel free to download the lists I created for free.
Work Task Shopping Lists: Another way we practice this is during our work task boxes. This is very similar to the grocery shopping set up, just on a much smaller scale. Student look at a shopping list and fill the bag with those items. I have shopping lists with pictures or with words, ranging from 3 to 5 items. This task is available to download at my TpT store.
Online Tutorials: I've talked about how much I love the GFCLearnFree website before. Seriously, if you are looking for functional life skills, you will find an interactive tutorial in their Everyday Life section! The grocery list tutorial goes over finding the right aisle and then finding those items on your list. Did I mention its interactive? Awesome! :)
Grocery Store File Folders: And then there's my grocery store file folders that I've talked about in detail here. There are a total of 10 file folders, 2 which specifically deal with shopping from a list and the other cover a variety of grocery store topics.
Grocery Store Field Trip Prep: I created this grocery store community unit that is packed full of materials including Bingo games, social stories, vocabulary, coloring pages, worksheets, and more! We will start using that unit the month of our grocery store trip.
Honestly, I didn't realize I had so many grocery shopping resources when I started to type this post! What other things do you do to prepare your students for grocery shopping? I'd love to hear about them!
I have 8 never-seen-before-on-this-blog work boxes to share with you today! (I know you're super excited, right?)
I found these baby socks in a garage sale free box and grabbed them knowing I'd be able to use them for something (FYI - NOT a baby!). I love the real life matching/ laundry skill application. Plus since they are little baby socks I can fit more in a single box!
I had one student who really loved doing this "medicine" box! This box works on one to one correspondence as well as color matching. I have a gazillion of beads like this in my classroom so I find quite a few ways to work them into tasks :)
Speaking of things I have a lot of, foam shapes!!! Seriously I have been giving like 5 tubs of the things, so I went through and grabbed some big, medium, and small circles for this task. Oh, and those are yogurt containers I separate them into.
Silverware sorting task. Trays came from the dollar store (in a pack of 4) as well as the silverware.
For the Easter egg task, students match the colors for the top and the bottom of each egg and also adds an eraser in the egg. The egg carton made this task do-able for one of my students who could only use one arm, he positioned the bottom in the carton and was able to snap on the top that way. I also have a student whose job is to crack open the eggs and take out the erasers.
Packaging task using office supplies. I taped an "order form" to each sandwich bag. Download the order forms here. The preview on google docs looks weird, but download it in word and everything should look right.
Measuring cups and spoons - putting them in order and placing on the ring.
Counting by 10s with math manipulatives. Each bag has a number that the student needs to fill using the math rods.
For more work task box ideas, check out these below and follow on facebook!
Don't you just love when you can get your students excited to work? :) My students were begging if they could do this task!
I made this task at the end of the year and my students loved it! Seriously, my students who never want to work, would work on this task. I got this small container from Wal-mart in the fishing department and taped in the pictures that you see above. I then laminated a couple of sheets of the pictures which then I cut out to go into each section.Students then sort the pop and the chips. It's really just a simple sorting activity, but is more fun because, let's be honest, everything is more fun with food! Plus, it actually takes a decent amount of time to complete, but it holds their focus.
Download the images that I used here so that you can make your own!
And hope your Wal-mart also has this same box in their fishing section :)
Update: This post is now a few years old and people are having issues finding this exact box. This one on Amazon(affiliate link) looks like the exact same box, but you can possibly find other similar boxes that will also work, even if the spaces aren't exactly the same!
And here's yet another work task post! I hope you guys aren't getting sick of them, but I just have so many and didn't want to bore you by putting them all in one post! :) So here's the next section of work tasks that we use in my classroom.
I feel like this task is a common one, and it's a great one! I drew rectangles around the clothespins on the index cards and then colored them in so students can match the color to the clothespin.
I had these shape Bingo-ish boards from who knows where. They were pretty old. I cut them up into strips of 3 and add Velcro. Insta-shape matching task!
Medicine 1:1 correspondence task. At the beginning of the year I created visuals for one color for Morning, another for Noon, etc...but none of my current students could get that. So 1:1 correspondence it is!
Would you call this task collating? The student has to put an apple of each color together and then secure with a paper clip.
Color match and 1:1 correspondence. I colored in spaces in an ice cube tray and used these little circles I had in a math manipulative kit.
This task is just to put a highlighter in each bag and seal it.
More medicine containers! (I found them at an estate sale this summer) I printed out pictures of suns and moons and students put the correct picture in the AM / PM spot.
And, yes, here's more work tasks for you to check out. If you missed my other work task posts, check them out here and here for more info on our independent work task station.
I got a bunch of CDs from free-cycle and went through them to find the CDs that look similar to the covers to create this matching/packaging task.
Pipe cleaners and pony beads. Pretty self explanatory, student matches color and strings on the beads.
These were leftover from a Halloween party, and I almost threw them out when I noticed some of the handles had fallen off. Yes! It has now turned into a great assembly task by put the handles back on the skulls! :)
Next I have sorting tasks with Velcro with a variety of different categories. These categories sets come from Erin - Adventures in Tutoring and Special Education. Thanks Erin! :)
I also use these and other task cards that can be answered with a dry erase marker. This specific set works on knowing which bill is worth more and can be found here.
This task is sorting bumpy frogs from smooth frogs. I added bumps on the bumpy frog visual and container by using Elmer's glue and allowing it to dry. I really like this task because it's not something students are used to sorting so it really makes them think. This would also be a great task for visually impaired/blind students.
Christina Bailey, a transition life skill teacher, offered to share a bunch of her work boxes on my blog! Thank you Christina! Christina works with transition aged students (19-26 years old) with severe cognitive and/or health impairments. Her school serves students from multiple school districts within the county who learn best in an alternative placement.
