Free Printable Books (for Older Students)

First a free printable color book for learners with significant special needs that has no picture of toys, children our kid's clothing.

View more presentations from Kate Ahern.

If you have trouble with SlideShare you can also get it on Google Docs.

You can use as a slide show.  You can print, laminate and bind.  Play "Eye Spy" with the pages for receptive language, use descriptions or functions of objects to add new skills.  Hand out the pages and have the kids collect items the same color as their page and then share with their friends.

Here is a book that has the numbers 1-10 appearing on each page.

Numbers book

View more presentations from Kate Ahern.

If the SlideShare link doesn't work try Google Docs.

Enjoy!

Kiz Club Learning Resources for Kids

Kiz Club has some excellent resources for those teaching young children with and without special needs.  Indeed it has some nice resources that can be age appropriate for older children with special needs as well. 

For the younger set the Stories and Props has some wonderful items you can print out and use with common early childhood stories.  Buried in that section are some nice, simple, online, switch adaptable, read aloud stories for all ages.  Be sure to give them a look. 

The topics, crafts and flashcards sections hold nice materials for all ages.

A Fan of Fans

Learning fans are educational props that are used more in the UK and Australia than in the US.  In our classroom they can be used as visual cues, communication aids and even low tech eye gaze communication.  Students can point (or look at) a choice, a match, an answer, what's next in the schedule, etc. 

Communication/Social Skills

• Emotion Fan
• Communication Fan
• Traffic Light Fans
• Basic Communication (log into Adapted Learning first)
• Schedule Fan (log into Adapted Learning first)

Literacy/Language

• Alphabet 
• Consonant Clusters
• Phonemes
  
• Additional Phonemes
• Writing Targets 
• Literacy and Numeracy Fans 
• Prepositions
• Customizable Literacy Fans

Numeracy/Math

• Numbers
• Numbers
• Number Fan 0-9
  
• 2D Shapes
  
• 3D Shapes
• Shapes
• UK Money
• Euro Coins 
• Euro Money Words
• Digital Clocks
• Analogue Clocks
• Customizable Numeracy Fans

Blank Fans

• PDF Template
• Power Point Template
  

The Learning Program

The Down Syndrome Foundation of Orange County has a free and comprehensive set of learning materials that are appropriate for learners with many different developmental or intellectual working on their Learning Program website.

Included are (you must be logged in to go to most links):

Literacy Materials

• instructional materials
• introductory sight word readers and flashcards (which use photo support and large print for low vision)
• emergent readers and flashcards which support the Lakeshore Learning Readers
  
• abc phonics materials
  

Math Materials

• Introduction to Numbers (numbers, counting, number lines, concepts)
• Addition
• Subtraction
• Money
• Time
  

Daily Activity Guides

Significant and Profound Disabilities:
Many of the materials would be great for students with very significant to profound intellectual disabilities who are not necessarily working on literacy or numeracy per se. The introductory sight word readers make fantastic photo based vocabulary concept books for our learners working on earlier cognitive skills, as do the Count to Ten book and Counting Fruit book; textures or objects could be added for students with low vision.

Classroom Makeables, Posters and More

Mentioned today on Classroom Displays, Mrs. Pancake is a fantastic site of "Doodads", also know as posters, borders, flashcards, work sheets and paper crafts.

Sites of the Day

Here are two sites to check out for back to school. I recommend getting a mini portable external hard drive or a very high capacity flash drive and filling them up with the worksheets and activities from these sites and others, all the boards from the Yahoo Boardmaker Group and anything else you may you from year to year, setting to setting.

• Kidz Club Learning Resources has a variety of seasonal, reading, math and basic concept PDF worksheets and activity ideas, download to your drive for last minute lessons and time fillers
• Therasimplicity is created to be a paid online boardmaker replacement for speech and occupational therapists, however it has a variety of hand outs, worksheets and games that are useful for the special education teacher. A thirty day trial membership is plenty of time to explore the site, see if you want to sign up and download any handouts, worksheets or activities you may wish to keep on hand on your hard drive.
• SuperDuper is one of my favorite companies and they provide samples of many of their products in PDF format, i.e. this summer I didn't send my students favorite game, All About Me, All About You to ESY, but I was about to download the questions from the game from the SuperDuper site and the ESY teacher was able to use them. They also have an extensive handouts section.
• SEN Teacher if you haven't been here in awhile SEN Teacher has some new printables for downloading and printing with no need to differentiate or make age appropriate or our kids
• TSL Books This site has worksheets, activities, crafts and puzzles for grades Pre-5 all free