Kmart Love

By now if you follow me on Instagram you know that I am a Kmart tragic.  I can’t get enough of their affordable and sturdy clinic room supplies.  My private practice with 20 Speechies, 10 OTs and 5 locations means that we are constantly on the look out for cost-effective consumables and activities. We use things, games break and then we are always inspired by new games and ideas.  (BTW – check us out at peninsulaspeechplus.com.au – we have positions open at the moment if you are looking for a new role).

I wanted to share what was in my basket in our latest buy up. (Click on the images for links straight to Kmart – not affiliated, just for ease)

We have just purchased a new range of jigsaw puzzles.  Jigsaw puzzles are versatile for many goals and ages of development.  Start with big shapes with a theme to develop vocabulary and fine motor skills.  You can then build to more advanced puzzles with smaller pieces to develop descriptive vocabulary and visual-spatial skills.  Depending on goals I like to hide puzzle pieces around the room and target prepositions or descriptive vocabulary while giving instructions.  When it comes to storage, these containers are perfect for smaller puzzle boards. They keep the pieces in check.

If your puzzle board is larger than A4 these document wallets fit the bill, and they come in a pack of three!

Next in the craft aisle, I found a treasure trove.

Everything is better with sequins.  I love these mixed sequins packs – they have snowflakes for winter work, leaves for trees when you have drawn a tree trunk worth of articulation targets and the pretty sequins can decorate a fairy or robot (buttons and nuts).  You can even dole them out one at a time.  They put a little pizazz into my therapy.

Right next to the sequins were packs of feathers, googly eyes and pom-poms.  I use these in my invitation to play scenes and for craft mixed in with my therapy activities.  It is crazy how hard some children will work for the extra bling on their page.  It is also a great way to build their imagination.  A pom pom could be a dinosaur egg, a bowl of food, or a seat for a fairy.

We run craft group intensives in the holidays.  We have every brush available as we slather paint on large cardboard boxes.share imaginations and create together.

There are brushes with easy grips, sponges and chubby brushes.

We also picked up some cool paint pots and easy clean brush wells.

 

Staying with the print theme, Kmart also has a great array of cheap wooden stamps.  There are many different types but these alphabet stamps caught my eye.  They are great as another medium for literacy-based activities.

Now there is nothing worse than all of these wonderful products being disorganised.  In fact, a messy resource room sends me straight to insane monster having a tantrum.  So let’s talk storage.

These are only a few of the options available.

I still have more!  Yes, it was a huge trolley.  Turn into the next blog for my toy suggestions