Creating Inclusive Early Childhood Spaces

Today is World Autism Day and April is Autism Awareness and Acceptance month. As an autistic educator and content creator, I will be sharing some of my favorite resources with you all throughout this month - and beyond.

I will also be back to posting regular inclusive studies next week. (New study: Insects)

https://neuroclastic.com/my-brain-is-autistic/

Written by Terra Vance with art contributions from Kate Jones

** What is Neuroinclusive? NeuroInclusive is a word coined by that is used to describe spaces, activities, and programs that are intentionally, actively designed to foster inclusion for people who are from different neurotypes— like Autistics, ADHDers, PDAers, dyslexics, etc.

My Brain Is Autistic This is a NeuroInclusive story for all ages about how Autistic brains work with free printable PDF. Great for teachers share with students!

Inclusive garden lesson plans from STEMIE

https://stemie.fpg.unc.edu/discovery-play-activities-your-young-child-gardening?fbclid=IwAR1oMH0DD3ekRVmDos776C8Ienw9nwUp7MpzofOvor7QJ_LaFvW6cPW5dA0

Discovery Play Activities with Your Young Child: Gardening | STEMIE With disruptions of the family routines and limited physical activities, children may feel overwhelmed, upset, and stressed during this challenging time. Check out the curated set of resources to help families with young children with and without disabilities talk about the pandemic and navigate cha...

Help children calm down with simple strategies and activities.

Reshare from Data Based Decisions for Psychoeducational Evaluations

Communication strategies that support inclusion

Instructional Adaptation: Communication Supports
Use a variety of methods of communication (e.g., sign language, gestures) to meaningfully engage children

Happy Nowruz!

Happy Nowruz!
Nowruz, also known as Persian New Year, has been observed for more than 3000 years as the victory of spring over darkness.
Nowruz which means ‘new day’ is celebrated by countries including Iran, Afghanistan, Albania, India, Kurdistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey & Turkmenistan.

Loose parts play: Making flowers

Social Sunday

Are you working on teaching the young children in your life to clean up their toys? Check out this resource. It can help support young children in learning the expectations around cleaning up.

https://challengingbehavior.org/document/cleaning-up-my-toys-example/

A Garden Study Flannel Board Story for Circle Time

"Butterfly, Butterfly fluttering around
Under which tulip can you be found"

Target shapes or colors with this activity

Garden Books for Preschoolers

https://earlylearningideas.com/garden-books-for-preschoolers/

Happy St. Patrick's Day

#2023

Learning About Seeds

Materials needed: different types of seeds, magnifiers, and tweezers

Skills targeted: fine motor, sorting, and science (learning about the properties of seeds)

Support children in working on their matching skills by getting out real nature books and then collecting flowers, seeds, and plants from the garden and seeing if you can find them in the book.

Fine Motor and Science Activity

Set Up: At the sensory table, cut flowers and work on identifying the parts of flowers with young children

Extension of dramatic play: You can talk about how florists cut flowers when they arrange the flowers

A play dough garden invitation to play

Materials: play dough, Garden Bugs dough rollers by Yellow Door toys, and some bugs

Practice Mindfulfness with Garden Yoga for Preschoolers

Get the PDF here: https://childhood101.com/yoga-for-kids-a-walk-through-the-garden/?fbclid=IwAR3Rnq85VKa2xQszwKGdHrC3yz8bDhd8z4d1a7Z3ifKZrKa_HJGfetAx_48

Explore flowers at the light table

Resin blocks by hello beautiful

Check out this free Flipping for Plants book on Teachers Pay Teachers. You can use it to journal what you learn about the plants during your garden study

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Plant-Life-Cycle-and-Parts-of-a-Plant-Flip-Book-Flipping-for-Plants-3724151

Changes to the enviorment for the garden study

Get the full sized PDF on the website here, in the Garden Study folder: https://www.earlychildhoodinclusion.net/visuals-activities-and-other-resour

Tactile letter exploration at the light table. There are many ways to learn letters so why not make it fun? Young children are hands on learners and you can help them learn difficult concepts like letters/sounds and numbers by making the concepts visual, tactile and fun.

Are you working on teaching young children to solve problems? (like how to take turns). Check out this free resource from challengingbehavior.org

https://challengingbehavior.org/document/suri-spider-selects-a-solution/

The Garden Study at the Sensory Table

Special thanks to the Target dollar spot for making this one possible. The pots, wooden garden markers, and green tray all came from Target.

Set up: soil, seeds, pretend ladybugs, and garden markers at the sensory table

The Flower Shop: Dramatic Play for the Garden Study

Inclusive strategies: A variety of textures to explore are included, this dramatic play area is labeled, (which supports early literacy too) this dramatic play theme is extended to the sensory table (check back tomorrow to see)

Garden Study: Table Toys

Engage in some hands on learning with these "Build a flower" manipulatives

Possible learning targets: Identifying the parts of a flower, fine motor skils, colors, 1:1 correspondence (How many flowers? How many leaves on this one?)

The Gardening Study: March 2023

Tubes & Tunnels Magnet Play

Materials: Voss water bottle, iron fillings, and magnets

Use the magnets to pull the fillings up through the water and watch how they move

Dot (the pom pom) goes on a tunnel ride

Materials needed: Cardboard, tape, pom poms, and baskets to catch the pom poms

Skills targeted: Problem solving (How do you construct the tunnel so that Dot makes from the top to the basket at the bottom)

Teaching Kindness to Young Children

Kindness is an abstract concept for young children. Make it concrete by modeling acts of kindness and talking about the kind things that they do.

Strategies to make kindness concrete:
- Kindness hearts: These stay at school and kids give them to each other when they see each other being kind
- Circle: kids talk about who they gave kindness hearts to and acts of kindness they saw
- Photos: Kids or adults can take pictures of acts of kindness and post them on the kindness board

Tubes and Tunnels: Changes to the Environment

FInd the full sized version on the website under the Tubes and Tunnels folder: https://www.earlychildhoodinclusion.net/visuals-activities-and-other-resour

Who lives in tunnels? Let's find out at the sensory table.

Set up: IKEA flisat table, kinetic sand, scoops, bugs, and a FLISAT insert from Etsy

Learning objective: Tunnels and habitats

Tubes & Tunnels at the water table

Set up: This is a Lakeshore light table with the clear sensory tray on top. There is blue water (dyed with liquid watercolor) in the bin. The tools inside are water tube pumps and cups.

Learning objectives: How tubes can be used, colors/color mixing, pouring/fine motor

Note: this is photo staged. During play, a clear shower curtain liner (cut to size) is placed under the water tray to protect the light table