Sequencing Anyone?

Tonight, I thought I would talk a little bit about a product I purchased at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year.

Photo from Ebay

This large 4-step sequencing kit by Lauri Toys has been a great addition to my speech room. I use it with my younger students (kindergarten and first grade) who have sequencing goals, but I have also used it to for sentence/"story" formulation with an older autistic student. 

Pros:

1. The first few cards provide two pictures and the students have to find the two missing pictures. This is a great way to introduce the kit.

2. All of the missing pictures are made of a soft foam material which makes them harder to lose than a little cardboard/laminated piece. They are also more fun to play with than sequencing cards, which I also use.

3. The majority of the pictures are fairly obvious so the kids do feel successful (sometimes my kindergartners will fly through the activity and mess up--great opportunity for cuing and talking about taking our time when we work.)

4. Fun illustrations that won't overstimulate visually sensitive students. 

5. It's also a way to talk about vocabulary items for younger students (seasons, activities, clothing items...)

6. Price-- It's $22.51 on Amazon

                                                       Photo from  PatchToys

Cons:

1. The pieces get mixed up very easily in the drawer. I finally gave up and used rubber bands to keep each set together so I wouldn't waste therapy time searching for the pieces I wanted. 

2. The foam pieces smell kinda funny at first so I left the drawer open everyday at the end of work for a week to air them out. 

As far as using this item for sentence formulation, I had my student look at each tile and develop a basic sentence..."The boy wants a cookie." "The cookie jar is on the refrigerator." "The cookie jar is up too high for him to reach." "The boy knocks the cookie jar down!" "The cookie jar fell on the floor." "Now, the cookie jar is broken." What should the boy do next? "The boy cleans up the floor."