5 Quick & Easy Activities For ESY In Early Childhood Special Education

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Are you trying to figure out what to use for ESY materials in your early childhood special education classroom this summer?  Materials that don’t take a lot of prep time, and can be used with multiple students on your caseload?  Well, I’ve got 5 quick and easy summer school special education activities for you!  These can be used at the early childhood level or early elementary level, depending on your student’s needs.  I will definitely be using all of these in my classroom for the summer session!

teacher and child sitting at a table together and working on simple activities for esy in special education

1. Simple Ring Cards For ESY In Special Education

Anytime you put a resource on a ring, it makes it easy to access. Rings also make it simple to store, and quick to flip through for a variety of skills.  If you are like me, you love materials that make teaching easier!  This preschool ESY ring card set is for speech therapy and special education. I know that many times, during the summer session, there are different support staff in the classroom. They aren’t always familiar with your students.  This resource can help with that because each section has written instructions!  There are a couple of options for summer school special education ring cards.  One is the Summer Skills Ring Cards, and another is the Summer Themed Two Step Directions Ring Cards.

2. All In One Binder For ESY For Special Education

Another way to have everything at your fingertips to make your ESY session for your special education classroom easier is to make a comprehensive binder.  This resource was originally created to print and send home to parents during distance learning last summer.  If you are teaching in person this summer, it is the perfect all in one packet to print and place in a binder!

brightly colored worksheets showing examples of activities for ESY in special education

3. Activities With Communication Boards For Summer School Special Education

So many times, the materials that I purchase are at a level that is too high for my students.  This is especially true for my non-speaking students.  For me, it is important to give those students an opportunity to express themselves with pictures.  It’s a bonus when I can find pictures and sentence strips that match the activity because it creates less work for me.  Who doesn’t want less work?!  The following summer school special education activities have visual communication boards included:  Summer Verbs, Summer Emotions, Sandcastle Prepositions, and Summer Vocabulary.

Example of a communication board with a variety of small pictures of prepositions on it.  Flashcards with a crab and a sandcastle show the crab in different positions.

4. Matching Activities For Summer School Special Education

I don’t know about you, but at the early childhood level, I can never get enough of simple matching activities.  The ability to match is a building block for everything when it comes to language and cognitive development.  It’s also really helpful when children learn to generalize the matching activities.  This might be learning to match using file folder activities, as well as matching an object to a picture, and matching pictures to books.  If you are looking for a variety of summer-themed ESY activities to use in your special education environment, check out this activity.  It’s one of my favorites!

brightly colored matching activities including putting kids in a pool, matching colorful bees to the hive, and matching ice cream cones

5. Digital Options For ESY In Summer School

Over the past year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have all become savvier with using digital options for teaching.  For some of us, it was an easier transition than it was for others.  Haha!  Boom Cards™ is one digital option that will continue to be relevant during summer school in the area of special education.  They provide a low prep, quick, and easy to use resource that is ready to go for teachers.  Boom Cards™ are also perfect to send home to families in order to have that carryover of skills into the home setting.  The following Boom Card™ decks are for the early childhood level for ESY in special education:  Summer Verbs, Summer Errorless Drag & Drop Scenes, Summer Vocabulary, and Summer Colors.

two hands holding an electronic tablet with a boom card summer activity on it.

Breeze Into ESY In Your Special Education Classroom

These are just a few of the ways you can breeze into your ESY session in your special education classroom this summer.  Summer school can be a little more relaxed, which is so nice!  I hope I’ve provided you with a few ideas that can help you reduce prep this summer. I also want to increase the time you are able to relax each day after you are finished teaching.  I’d love to see some of these resources in action in your classroom!  Tag me on Instagram if you use any of these ESY activities in your therapy sessions or special education classroom!

Another fun activity that can be done anytime during the school year is the DIY prepositions box. Learn how to make yours by clicking here.

Don’t forget to grab this free language framework today!  If you download The Ultimate Guide For Targeting Language Skills In Young Children With Autism you will receive: a framework outlining typical developmental milestones in the area of language development.  The framework focuses on the following skills:  mean length of utterance (MLU), vocabulary, verbs, prepositions, following directions, pronouns, and WH questions.  This framework will help you quickly identify the steps to take when making goals for speech therapy, and to know what to target next, and so much more! Click here for The Ultimate Guide For Targeting Language Skills In Young Children With Autism.

teacher and student looking toward each other and working on speech therapy

I’m excited to bring you more blog posts now that I’ve learned how to write them using my new WordPress site! If I can learn how to do this, you can too! Click here to see how.

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Also, check out these preschool standards used by Relate To Educate in order to guide her instruction. She also has a free resource library!

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This blog post explains what purposeful play in preschool and kindergarten is. The Cream City Teacher gives an easy to understand explanation and some awesome ideas about purposeful play that you can implement!

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