Do your students have functional or life-skills focused IEP goals? What about fine motor goals? These holiday treat bags are a great way to work on generalizing those skills and applying them to something a little extra fun around the holidays!

supplies

What supplies are needed? Hershey kisses (holiday or regular!), snack size bags (we like these), and treat bag labels. If you have access to google drive, you can grab a FREE copy of the visuals we used to help increase independence.

How do you get the money to purchase supplies? We use a combination of funds from our snack cart/coffee cart and donations. Another option is having staff purchase these treat bags for one another and using those funds to purchase supplies (check out my post about how we do this for our Boo Bag project HERE).

what goals or skills do you target with this project?

Fine motor-opening ziploc bags, closing ziploc bags, stapling the tags to the bags (or hole-punching and tying), you could have the students pick up the chocolates with tongs or other tools, bilateral skills (using both hands at the same time)

Basic academics- give the students a designated quantity of chocolates to put int he bag (we did 3). Providing them with a visual counting mat is a great accommodation for this!

Following a visual/following directions– Use the free visual linked above or make your own! Some of our kids just need written directions/steps, while others benefit from more picture-based visuals. Remember to differentiate in whatever way is going to set your students up for independence!

Color matching-using the holiday hershey kisses (red, green silver) is a great way to incorporate color matching. You can provide them with a visual that specifics/shows how many of each color to use and have them match to the visual.

Sorting/organizing-before asking students to start filling bags, having the students help organize and sort the supplies is a great way to get the familiar with the supplies and work on sorting/organizational skills. I tend to just use the clear bins we have around our classroom; no need to buy anything special.

Writing-you can have students help label the bags with teacher names or write who the bag was made by (their name).

Navigating the environment safely/independently- This step can take a little extra planning, but it worth it if you have students that are working on locating places/classrooms/teachers around the building. We will sometimes sort the treat bags into groups by location in the school (office, nurse, 400 hallway, 100 hallway, special area (art, music, PE, library), etc. You could also label the bags with teacher names so that they are checking the sign outside of the classroom and delivering it to the correct place.

Anytime we are doing a project like this, I remind myself that it’s ok to break it up and have students participate in the steps that are appropriate to their goals. For example, some students may benefit most from filling the bags versus delivering them to classrooms. While this is a fun treat for staff, keeping it student-focused and differentiating based on their goals and needs is always the priority.

I’m all about maximizing opportunities for generalization. We of course work on these skills and goals with more direct teaching and discrete tasks throughout the year, especially initially, but projects like this help us gauge how those skills are generalizing to activities that we may not do as often. After all, that’s how we REALLY know a skill is mastered, right???

If you decide to incorporate this project into your classroom, I’d love to hear how it goes! Tag me on instagram @includedinsped and happy elfing!

kelsey

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