Using a Step by Step With Smart Speaker

Using a Step by Step Communicator with a smart speaker is a great way for children & young people with complex learning difficulties & disabilities to choose and listen to music independently.
The Step by Step Communicator is a voice recording device with levels. You can pre-record sequential messages to be used at certain times of the day by your learner, or you can record and save messages to be used regularly. There is a total of 4 minutes of recording time, with no limit on the number of messages per level.
To use the Step by Step with a smart speaker to play music, all you have to do is record a series of messages asking ‘Alexa’ or ‘Google'(depending on which speaker you have) to play a certain song.
As a smart speaker is voice-activated, it will listen to the message and play the requested song.
The Step by Step Communicator allows the learner more control of the music they listen to. If they don’t like a song, they can press again to ask the speaker to play the next song on the messages list.
To find out more about communication devices, visit INCLUSIVE TECHONOLGY

Christmas Tree Sensory Bucket

After the success of our sensory firework bucket, we made one for Christmas.
In our Christmas bucket, we put a small artificial Christmas Tree, tree decorations with a good tactile shape and colour such as candy canes, and shiny plastic baubles, we added shiny white tinsel and bells, battery-powered Christmas lights, indoor snowballs, fir cones, and a large plastic shiny star for the top of the tree.
There are many sensory elements to the bucket. It could be used in various ways to support children with SEN, visual stimulation, shape discrimination, tactile exploration, fine motor skills, communication & language development, and play.
Thinking of creating your own Christmas sensory bucket? Download our FREE Widgit Symbols & Makaton Signs to support the activity from our website’s resource section.

Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Tree App

Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Tree is a brilliant, sensory cause & effect app. Simply tap the screen to decorate the Christmas tree with ornaments & twinkly lights. You can add snow, change the background and shake the iPad to make the ornaments swing.

This app is available for FREE from the App store & the Google Play store

Neon Christmas Tinsel

This neon orange Christmas tinsel is £1.99 from The Range.

Tinsel is a wonderfully tactile material… under fluorescent lighting, this neon orange tinsel looks visually brilliant !

A super sensory resource for under £2

Ultraviolet Light Bulbs

If you don’t have Ultraviolet lighting in your sensory room, or you want to create a glow in the dark environment at home these ONFORU lightbulbs are the perfect solution. They fit into any standard e27 lamp holder & once switched on cast a large area of blacklight, making anything within a few meters fluoresce.

You can purchase a pack of 2 ONFORU lightbulbs from AMAZON UV LIGHT BULBS

My Mummy is Autistic by Heath Grace & Joanna Grace

A Picture Book & Guide about Recognising & Understanding Difference

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mummy-Autistic-Recognising-Understanding-Difference

This original and imaginative book has been created by five-year-old Heath. In it, Heath illustrates his understanding of his autistic mother Joanna, giving insight into the different ways in which autistic and neurotypical people understand language.

In his simple and uncomplicated style, accompanied by bright and colourful illustrations, Heath explains why his mother’s brain understands words at a different rate than his own, and how they communicate in spite of their differences. Heath’s work is accompanied by explanatory notes exploring Joanna’s own experience of autism and language.

Key features include:

  • A Foreword by broadcaster, environmentalist and author Chris Packham, on acceptance, understanding, and expressing an autistic reality
  • A unique exploration of language processing differences told through the eyes and mind of a child.
  • Bright, colourful pictures and simple language, perfect for inspiring conversations about neurodiversity between people of all ages.
  • Explanatory text that can be read alongside the story.
  • Autism portrayed as a positive and permanent neurological difference, not deficit.

The combination of story and commentary makes this book a unique tool for all people seeking to explain and understand difference, regardless of age and experience. Although focusing on autism as an example of neural difference, it can be used to explain and celebrate neurodiversity in all its forms and will help to build relationships across the divide of neurological difference.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mummy-Autistic-Recognising-Understanding-Difference

Bonfire & Firework Sensory Bucket

Visit the sensory play category of our Sensory Soup website to see how to make your own ‘Bonfire & Firework’ sensory bucket.

https://sensorysoup.co.uk/downloads/category/sensory-room

The activity download gives you loads of ideas on what sensory materials to put in your bucket & where to get them from.

This would be a wonderful activity for your leaners to play with, in your sensory room or dark den if you have one.