Teaching Clean Up!

If your kids are anything like mine- they like to pull EVERY toy or book off the shelf at once, and DON’T like to put everything back! This year- I’m saying no to a messy book nook and teaching my kids to clean up with visual supports.

Here is my book nook area- this is where my students take their breaks, once they earn their tokens on their token boards.

There are many things to choose from, books,sensory toys, marble magnet trax, (affiliate link) mirrors, stuffed animals, toys cards, and the classroom favorite- that big dinosaur from target.

Students are able to play as they wish for their alotted time. I use these sports timers ( you can see at the top of the photo) to time our quick book nook breaks in between work stations.

I really wanted students to be able to play HOW and with WHAT they wanted during their time. The rules are, they must stay on the rug in the designated area, they must be safe, and be sitting up. Other than that- I really don’t control how or what they play with at this time. They can take out more that one toy at once and use them as they wish- it’s part of being a kid & we teach leisure skills and appropriate play at other times in the day- this is THEIR time to take a BREAK.

What I DO care about- is keeping this area SPOTLESS, and teaching the skill of CLEANING UP when your break is done.

How do I teach this? With visual labels of where everything goes. 

I easily completed this organization task in about 15 minutes. I placed everything on the shelf how I wanted it, and I snapped pictures on my iphone- ran down to the computer lab, pulled them all into a powerpoint document on the same page and printed them out. I also made word labels to increase our reading and sight word knowledge, printed those on astrobrights paper (affiliate link)- so you can’t miss it! and printed those out, taped them both on in front of the toy with scotch shipping tape and it was ready to go!

When students clean up- they match each toy to the picture and make it look just like it looks in the photo.

I also printed a picture of the entire shelf as a whole and put it on top- my kids know that when the shelf matches the picture- they have done their job!

This is a very basic way to teach responsibility and clean up, I’m thinking of doing this on my student shelves and in my kitchen area too!

How do you teach clean up?