I read almost 70 books this year-I wish there was a way to tally all the blogs I read, too. That would account for 100 books total-I am sure! I seem to spend more time on the computer "reading" than actually reading books. This upcoming year I do have a solution, though! My sweet husband gave me a Kindle Fire! So books are always at my fingertips! I am sure I will top 100 books this way!
So on to the list:
Favorite book of the year: Ready, Player One by Earnest Cline
Favorite Classic: Pride and Prejudice
Favorite new (to me) series: The Fever Series, by Karen Marie Moning, Actually, the audiobooks are awesome! So listen to them if you can.
Favorite Book Club book: In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Other recommended reads
The girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, Steig Larsen
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Graceling, Kristin Cashore
Life of Pi, Yann Martel (This was a very good audiobook)
His Majesty's Dragon (listen on audiobook!)
Pillars of the Earth
Receommended for SLP's:
Carly's Voice: Breaking through Autism, Aurthur Fleischmann (makes me look at my students with autism and go hmmm...)
****The interesting thing about my entire list is every book-All of my favorites-except Graceling, In Cold Blood and Carly's Voice-were "read" in audiobook format. I can say that this format greatly enhances books as I tried to read Little Women and Life of Pi in the past and they didn't appeal to me...but as audiobooks they were wonderful.
Here are all of my reads for 2012:
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Monday, December 31, 2012
Picture Exchange: decorating a tree!
THis is a quick and easy activity for Christmas time:
Every year I take my 2 foot tree and wooden ornaments in for my students to decorate. This year I added Picture Exchange for my nonverbal students in my Autism class:
I put all the choices out-and had a sentence strip handy:
Once they had all had several turns (and gauging their interest and ability to sit!) I would pull out the "light" picture. Once it was chosen I plugged it in, we turned out the lights and the activity was over. Usually only one boy chose it-the others wanted to put on the ornaments.
I did this as a circle activity so all 4 students were present We worked on requesting AND turn taking-oh boy did we work on turn taking. The funny thing was, each one demonstrated that they understood turn-taking but none of them wanted to wait. One little boy would turn away when I told him it was "K" turn...and then roll on the floor and yell. By the end of the month-after almost daily tree decorating-we took turns with little trouble.
Once they had all had several turns (and gauging their interest and ability to sit!) I would pull out the "light" picture. Once it was chosen I plugged it in, we turned out the lights and the activity was over. Usually only one boy chose it-the others wanted to put on the ornaments.
I did this as a circle activity so all 4 students were present We worked on requesting AND turn taking-oh boy did we work on turn taking. The funny thing was, each one demonstrated that they understood turn-taking but none of them wanted to wait. One little boy would turn away when I told him it was "K" turn...and then roll on the floor and yell. By the end of the month-after almost daily tree decorating-we took turns with little trouble.
Friday, December 28, 2012
My Winter door
Circulating around Pinterest is a very cute snowman door. I have searched and searched and searched for 1) the original post and 2) directions without any luck...SO I decided to recreate the door and post directions. I had some, um, trouble-so while I am documenting how I did this-I have put some helpful hints here and there along the way.
First, You need cups. I used plastic cups one size smaller than those red and blue Solo cups. I bought a huge bag of them at Sams Club.
I bought 3 different size styrofoam wreaths at a craft store (Michaels). They have flat sides and are 2 or three inches thick. THIS IS IMPORTANT! My little wreath was only an inch or so thick (it was all they had) and it caused major issues. After the fact, I found a small one at Hobby Lobby that was the right thickness.
Next I hot glued the cups to the wreaths.
I glued around the flat part of the wreath first
I reinforced with masking tape (FYI-USE DUCK TAPE PEOPLE),
then glued to the cups.
I ended up with this:
I repeated this 3 2 more times and voila, I was done!!!
Except-I came in the next morning to this:
(In truth, this was the scene more than once-as I performed a trial and error emergency fix on Mr. Snowman--most of the time he fell apart on his own-but I am fairly certain at least once one of the older students played a part. This was also caused by that thin wreath head-it gave me the most trouble. The thicker wreaths came loose but not much and oddly enough, the biggest one actually never came loose at all)
So I stapled every cup to its neighbors
and finally duck taped end to end and all around on the back. Masking tape might work-but I had crappy generic doesn't stick to anything tape-so my advice is to get duck tape. I ended up using black duck tape and you can't even tell-so whatever color you have should be fine.
I hung him on Command Hooks.
I added cut out eyes, mouth and buttons...and rolled up a piece of paper for the nose...Added my scarf and:
The finished door:
.
.
PS-no stage of this took very long. I spent maybe an hour putting him together the first time...and each fix was a few minutes in the making once I figured out what to do. I would definitely do this again.
The kids-and teachers-LOVE him! (and I do, too!)
Next I hot glued the cups to the wreaths.
I glued around the flat part of the wreath first
I reinforced with masking tape (FYI-USE DUCK TAPE PEOPLE),
then glued to the cups.
I ended up with this:
I repeated this 3 2 more times and voila, I was done!!!
Except-I came in the next morning to this:
(In truth, this was the scene more than once-as I performed a trial and error emergency fix on Mr. Snowman--most of the time he fell apart on his own-but I am fairly certain at least once one of the older students played a part. This was also caused by that thin wreath head-it gave me the most trouble. The thicker wreaths came loose but not much and oddly enough, the biggest one actually never came loose at all)
So I stapled every cup to its neighbors
and finally duck taped end to end and all around on the back. Masking tape might work-but I had crappy generic doesn't stick to anything tape-so my advice is to get duck tape. I ended up using black duck tape and you can't even tell-so whatever color you have should be fine.
I hung him on Command Hooks.
I added cut out eyes, mouth and buttons...and rolled up a piece of paper for the nose...Added my scarf and:
The finished door:
.
.
PS-no stage of this took very long. I spent maybe an hour putting him together the first time...and each fix was a few minutes in the making once I figured out what to do. I would definitely do this again.
The kids-and teachers-LOVE him! (and I do, too!)
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