Phone Video Reinforcers

Most current cell phones allow you to record short videos, which make great quick reinforcers. Record yourself singing a song, falling down, playing a musical instrument, etc. Also, try clips of parents and old tutors doing any of the above. Some children are fascinated by video tours of tutors' homes, or meeting tutors' pets and family members. You'd be surprised how much kids enjoy a 40-second documentary on your trip to the grocery store last night (and you can also work in community location info).

Some children will like seeing the same clips over and over, while for others, the big appeal is getting to see new videos each time a tutor visits.

The video quality will not be great, but you can also record YouTube videos right off the computer screen.

Reinforce individual responses with short clips (3-5 seconds). Save longer clips as back-up reinforcers for whole sittings or programs that involve time-consuming responses (e.g., independent academic tasks like worksheets and art projects, advanced trips).

M.I.N.D. Institute Lectures Available Online

Many people in the Sacramento area are aware of the monthly Distinguished Lecturers series at the U.C. Davis M.I.N.D. Institute. However, fewer people know that full length video recordings of these presentations, going back to 2005, are available for free online:

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/mindinstitute/events/dls_recorded_events.html

What do we play next?

When we first start playdates with our younger children, we often create a "schedule" for the children to follow. This schedule has many benefits (e.g., enables our child to be more independent, children pick out the games together, tutor can refer to the schedule when children are having "conflicts" over which games to play). However, we don't want it to "feel" like a schedule, so many of our senior tutors have created different playdate schedules that often reflect each child's individual preferences.

For example, Audrey, a Bay Area senior tutor, recently designed a Finding Nemo playdate schedule for her child.

Each fish has a space for a game.

When the children are done playing the game, they remove the picture and put it in an all done spot at the end of the schedule (see below).

The entire playdate schedule!

Great Job Audrey!!

Let's share what other ideas everyone is using for their playdate schedules. Email pictures to your directors and we will post them here to share!

Do you YouTube?

Looking for new stimuli to teach Superheroes? Want to teach Star Wars but you don't have the movies? Does your child love sea creatures?

Then YouTube may be the perfect place for you to find new reinforcers and stimuli. Tutors are using YouTube as a reinforcer by letting the children they are working with pick what they want to look up (e.g., Lego Star Wars, Sponge Bob, pufferfish, tornados). They are also using it for stimuli to introduce new concepts.

Hmmm...have we thought about using this for action videos? What a great way to generalize when children are first learning to expressively label actions!