School Time - Our Favorite Activities & Supplies

With school starting I wanted to revisit some of our favorite school activities.  The ones that we continue to use regularly, have really worked for Junior, and helped him "get" a concept. Also a bit about how Junior learns best to give you a better idea of how we use the items and activities I share about.
I will also share some of the items we use regularly with his school.  Be sure to click the links or some of what I am sharing may not make sense. 

Of course his top educational item would be his ipad( click HERE for his ipad blog, I don't update it often but it shares all about how Junior uses the ipad and his journey with it) .  It is used for communication and to let me know he is really getting what we are learning about.  In school one of the things I often do is set it up for sequencing as well as to answer questions.  For example when he was learning about plants and gardening I had a ipad board that he used to show me what comes next in the process or answer the question I asked.  We also have many math and reading apps we use. Proloquo2go, Math Magic, Word Magic, TeachMe Kindergarten, TeachMe 1st grade, TeachMe 2nd grade, Measurement HD, Splash Math, Bugs and Buttons, AlphaWriter, Magnetic ABC, Abitalk phonics short vowels, Abitalk ABC phonics word family, Write My Name, Abitalk reading comprehension for first grade non fiction, Questionit, Sound Chase, Marine Life, the Mobile Education Builder apps(we use several of them), ilearn solarsystem, and TimeTimer.  Those are our main educational apps.  We also are using Sounding board, tap sequence, and radsounds to get Junior started using a switch with the ipad. Switch adaption will soon be more available for ipad access. 

 In this picture he was answering questions about things growing outside our apartment(proloquo2go app).

In This picture he is using the Measurement HD app.

I actually don't have a picture of our large white board but I think everyone knows what one looks like.  As Junior's reading skills improve it is at times easier to just write words on the board for him then to use the felt board and continually make more laminated words.  We used to always use the felt board but now use a combo of the white board and felt board. 

His felt board is another must have.  We use it daily for his school activities, games, art, and, other activities.  Here is a post about how we made it. The felt board allows us to get what we are doing up at eye level for him.  The clamp and arm holding the board is THIS one(though we got ours about 4 years ago and didn't pay near that much for it).
Here he is using it during a reading activity.  He is matching the sentence with the correct picture.  This picture is from a year ago and he has since added some longer words with blends. 

For hand over hand activities that require writing we use the fat pencils so he can hold onto it easier.  Junior cannot move his hands but it definitely helps him learn to actually write the answers(hand over hand) during math and reading activities.

Now a little about how Junior learns and some of our favorite school activities. 
Junior is now using just some typical textbooks for our base and I then add and adapt things for his needs.  For instance we are using a 2nd grade science text(Bob Jones) and I add lots of hands on activities, crafts, and projects to go along with whats in the book.  Junior needs a mix of learning modes to get the most out of what he is doing.  Right now he is learning about basic cells so we have looked at pictures of cells, colored pictures of cells, tomorrow we will be decorating cookies to look like cells, and we will be making a cell book.  He is also using a 2nd grade history book and is learning about American history.  Last month he was learning about Columbus so we did a section on ships and pirates.  His teacher brought over a ship model, he dressed like a pirate, followed a pirate map, learned about pirate words, looked at lots of pirate books, played with ships in water, etc.
Pirate Junior

 

 Multi sensory is the goal.

One of my very first posts on this blog was about how Junior is learning to read.  You can click HERE to read that post.  His reading is now more advanced but I am still using basically the same method.  

Also THIS post talks about how he works on reading comprehension.  We now do this on the ipad but it is the same idea(just so much easier for me to quickly make boards and I can have comprehension questions for each chapter we read since he is now loving the Hardy Boys books)
 A picture of him using his ipad for reading comprehension.
    Looking at the Question

 

answering the question

 

Though Junior uses his ipad a great deal now for math activities "asteroid math" is still a favorite.  I still remember watching his face as we were doing this activity and the subtraction concept finally "clicked" for him.  HERE is the post we did on this.  In the pics it shows very basic problems and Junior has now progressed to larger numbers.  We also adjusted this activity for other units we were doing.  For our unit on plants we put a felt tree cutout on the board and the balls became apples.  For the bug unit we added a felt rock cutout and the balls were then bugs.

It has been awhile since we did the unit on camping but we still use his tackle box math activity which I posted about HERE

Another of the camping activities we still frequently use is his fishing for words, you can view the post about that HERE and HERE (this second one is the activity being used for math)
catching his fish

The picture on the back of the fish he caught

Matching the picture with the correct word on his ipad

I will probably think of many other things to add once I push the publish button but this is a start.

Every child learns differently and I would love to hear about what has worked best for you.