Materials for home-based instruction

Back in the day when we ran an in-home ABA program, I had to come up with some creative solutions for materials, some of which I use to this day. Here are a few that others might find useful.

Since I don't have a colour printer or laminator, I often upload electronic files to my local Staples store for printing. They can even print on card stock, which my regular printer can't easily handle. I've lost count of the number of times I've used this, most recently for a token economy system and for colour photos to use when practicing crossing the road safely. 

To avoid wasting paper, I put worksheets inside clear plastic "sheet protectors", then have my son complete them using erasable markers (ones that come off with water: in the olden days I used these to write on overhead project acetates, if anyone remembers those). 

Dry erase markers and white boards have to be two of the greatest inventions ever. We have white boards of different sizes all over the house and in the car, along with packets of markers. I use them to give my son a visual reminder of schedules and "to do" items for the day, as well as for impromptu token economy boards, and he has the pleasure of erasing completed items. He also uses white boards himself: I have observed him madly writing out the lyrics to songs he's listening to, or sentences from a "read-along" story or audio book, or dialogue from a computer or video game, then immediately erasing them to start over again. Not sure what that's about, but he seems to enjoy it.

The only things better than dry erase markers are sticky notes. One way I like to use them is when planning a day's activities with my son. We can both write "to do" items on notes, and negotiate together what order they will be done in. I've even experimented with using notes of different colour to distinguish between "must do" and "could do" items, or to represent his choices vs. my choices. Easy to rearrange until we're both satisfied (or both equally dissatisfied) and inexpensive to simply discard.