This blog offers ideas to help you make the most of resources that you have, or can easily acquire, to create a range of related activities for your students. Making several uses of the same resource, or sensory input, allows for cyclic learning, generalisation and consistency across a topic or period of time.
This blog post is all about… Pillowcases!
It’s Autumn term and busy, busy, busy. The beginning of a new academic year is always a combination of getting everything on track and getting to know students and staff. Existing resources can be explored but equally using new items or trying new ways to use things you already have will offer a multitude of opportunities. Pillowcases were set as a challenge in a recent workshop and the ideas flowed. Here are five, but for sure, these will ignite your thinking and you will come up with more!
- Double-sided sequins. There are many articles made from double-sided sequin material including pillowcases. Fabulous for tactile work, they offer both an interesting ‘feel’ but a visual change as the sequins change sides. Shining a torch on these can create multiple visual stimuli (remember to try varying the distance from torch to pillowcase and try moving the light and halting for different effects).
- What is it? Place an everyday object that the student knows well into the pillowcase, can they feel from the outside and guess what it is? To make this easier, allow the student to reach inside and feel (but not look at) the actual object. To make this more difficult you could have two or more objects to identify in the pillowcase.
- The packing game. Give each student, or if playing in groups, each group, a pillowcase. Using a timer, how many objects can they fit in their pillowcase? You can alter this game by setting themes for the collected objects for example, by colour, by use or perhaps linked to a phoneme.
- Story bags. Into a pillowcase place objects, or photographs, or symbols, or words that represent a story you are working on. Take it in turns to remove something from the pillowcase and talk about it… who can guess what story the pillowcase represents?
- Pillowcase rest mats. Take four pillowcases and sew them together along the long side with all openings facing the same way. Pillows can be inserted to make a quick rest mat and when not in use it can easily be washed and folded away. See this Pinterest link for sewing ideas.
