Red Ribbon Week Poster

Anyone else doing red ribbon week activities this week? We are at my school and I like to have my students participate in at least some of the activities.

Each class makes a poster to submit, and here's what my class came up with (after a google search, I can't take all the credit...)

Isn't that too cute? I love the saying "Drugs are Despicable" and once you add the cute little minions (thanks to Learn.Create.Love), you just can't go wrong! Plus, I was going to print out the phrase with my color-in font, but then stumbled across this monster font I had downloaded a while back. WIN! :)

I think it's a winner, we shall see on Thursday!!!

For the rest of the week, I'll probably just pull out a few worksheets from my Red Ribbon Week binder I was given years back and then next month we will spend more time talking about Drugs/Alcohol as it is the November ULS topic. Which I am still trying to figure out, but am getting there, I think!

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Halloween Peer Buddy Event - Carving Pumpkins

I won't lie, I was so nervous to carve pumpkins with a bunch of special education students! We had the most students signed up ever (20! And one signed up today, the morning of the event) and only 4 confirmed buddies. I was feeling a little nervous how everything was going to end up...and then over 20 buddies showed up to help us! AH-MAZING! We had a blast getting to know each other while carving pumpkins! Here's a few tips for carving pumpkins with a group of special education students that made today run smoothly. 

I lined totes with garbage bags for all of the pumpkin guts. Put plastic tablecloths from the dollar store on the table - made clean up so much easier! I had gloves available which helped some students to be brave enough to dig in and get all of the guts! I had the pumpkin scrapers that came in the kits and also large kitchen spoons to help spoon everything out!

I printed off templates that the kids could then attached to their pumpkins with push pins or tape. Both seemed to work well but tape (just regular scotch tape) seemed to be the easiest. Here's one of the packs of face templates I printed. This one is good too, but you have to click on each one you want to print. You can also find a ton of these on google!

I got a few sets of the pumpkin master carving tool sets - like this one - and they were crap! About half of the knives broke. I will be looking for larger, more sturdier ones at the end of the season this year to get them while they are cheap to stock up for next years event!

So, didn't these turn out awesome or what?! This event really was just one miracle after the other, from the pumpkin (requested 17, 20 were delivered), to the amount of buddies showing up! I am so thankful for how well it turned out and for all of the fun that my students had!!

The pumpkins took us a good hour to complete. We also used this get-to-know-you question page in the very beginning to help encourage conversations. Then at the end we had dirt dessert pudding with chocolate pudding that my daily living skills students made, with crushed oreo "dirt" on top, complete with a gummy worm!

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Addressing envelopes - a simple yet effective trick

I decided to work on addressing envelopes in my consumer economics class today. We were practicing writing a check for something in a catalog (I know...outdated...but we focus on the basic ideas, items cost money and we need to take money out of our bank account to buy them). So I figured, why not work on addressing envelopes as well.

Some of my students were all over the place, writing to the very end of the envelope and/or putting info where it fit instead of where it belongs, so I started to highlight some envelopes.

It worked! Students used smaller letters to fit in the spaces and the right info is on the right lines! Winner winner!

Some students do great with just 3 simple lines which is obviously the direction to move in. I've also thought about creating a cut out to put over the envelope while students write to help them stay in the right spots. Any other suggestions or strategies you've used?

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