Social Skills Materials: {linky party}

The super talented Jenna over at Speech Room News is hosting another Love it and list it linky party.   This month’s theme is Social Skills Therapy Materials.

I’ve been working with students and clients with autism for 17 years now.  I love working with this population and have accumulated an entire bookshelf filled with social skill materials and books.  Did I hear someone say hoooooooooooooooarder?  

THE BOOK:
For therapy, one of my favorite books is We can make it Better by Elizabeth M. Delsandro.

This book contains a variety of short stories where one of the characters exhibits some unexpected behaviors.  You work through the story, having your student or client identify unexpected behaviors and then explain how each participant is thinking and feeling.  When you get to the end of the story there is a natural consequence.  For example, if you laugh at your friend, refuse to help them, and play by yourself-they are probably going to go home.  But here’s the best part:  They give you an alternate ending.  So once you’ve gone through the story-you go back and correct the mistakes.  Then the story ends with a more positive ending.  If you work with children with Autism or social thinking challenges-you need to get this book!!!!

THE KIT:
Most of the materials in this kit are designed to complement Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social
Thinking® Curriculum.  To learn more about the Social Thinking® and the vocabulary listed below please refer to her website: www.socialthinking.com.

To organize my cabinet, I started by getting all of the same type of storage boxes so that they stacked easily.  I typed out the materials in the kit, labeled it Social Skills and then used contact paper to secure the sheet to my container.  These are the materials in my Social Skills Box:

1.  Balanced Weight Scale from Learning Resources.  To work on conversational turn taking and balanced conversations. 
2.  Jello Brain Mold I purchased from Target after Halloween to work on Flexible Thinking©  and also the ideas of different kinds of Social Smarts©. 
3.  A Rock and a Flexible Brain© purchased from Social Thinking®.
4.  Mini Magnifying glasses purchased at a party goods store to focus on looking for social clues or being a Social Detective. 
5.  Giant Body parts purchased at the dollar store to focus on Whole Body Listening concepts and Thinking with your eyes©.
6.  Magnetic Poetry Emotion Faces.  I like these because it breaks it down to what are the eyes feeling/what is the mouth feeling.
7.  Shoe NotePads to go with Jenna Rayburn’s In your Shoes Pragmatic Download as well as other perspective taking in your shoes activities.
8.  Chalkboard paper thought bubbles I purchased at Michaels.  

THE APPS:
I really like Hamaguchi App’s Between the Lines series for working on tone of voice, sarcasm, perspective taking and idioms/slang.  The Hamaguchi apps are the best for allowing you to customize to fit your students.

The Social Express is another great app that really targets social skills aligned with Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking® curriculum.  It is expensive but they do put this app on sale.

THE BLOGS:
Blogs are some of the best places to find great, practical ideas for use in therapy.  I am in awe of each of these bloggers.  I know this totally dorky-they are like blogger celebrities.  The information they have provided has changed my therapy for the better.  If I met them in real life, I would probably faint.  

Jill Kuzma’s SLP Social and Emotional Skill Sharing Site:  Hands down the best social skills blog out there.  This is the first speech therapy blog that I started to follow.  There are tons of free resources, handouts and visuals to use when planning your social skills therapy sessions.  I’m fairly certain I have downloaded and laminated everything from her site.  Check out her Social filter download, her IEP goal ideas and her information on Perspective taking skills.

Autism Teaching Strategies:  This site is written from a mental health perspective.  It includes a ton of freebies as well as products for purchase.  The ideas and activities are motivating to children.  He is a coauthor of RYUU which is a creative and awesome social skills program which uses dragons and trading cars similar to Pokeman to engage students in conversations regarding social skills.  Check out the Green zone for conversation and his newest published product: The Conversation Train.

Autism Games: and Autism Games blog   These sites are no longer being updated.  But it is worth some serious blog stalking if you work with children who have difficulty engaging at all with you.  There are so many games and ideas to build interactive skills.  Plus she has a ton of videos for you to observe her therapy techniques.  These have a heavy RDI focus so it is probably not information you learned in school.   I highly recommend you take time to read it.  The information is FANTASTIC!  Check out the videos,  the parent tips and the why games are important in therapy.

TPT PRODUCTS: Shameless self promotion:
I have a couple of Social skills products-including a new one that is 50% off through tomorrow.

Okay, I could probably geek out on this subject all night.  Thank you to Jenna (another blogger who I would probably die if I met in person because of her incredible awesomeness) for hosting another link party.  Do you have great resources for social skills?  Head over to her site and link up your blog of your Facebook page!