At my middle school, I have students on the Autism Spectrum that have a difficult time with regulating their emotions or recognizing what type of emotion/behavior they are showing in certain situations. My SDC teacher is also using the Zones of Regulation with her class and it has been very successful because the teacher, myself and the staff use the vocabulary terms to explain what zone we are in all day long! Today I am going to share ideas and activities you can use in therapy. I love how you can infuse this program into any situation just by using the vocabulary to talk about what zone you are in.
This is a great poster to hang in your room as a visual and use with your students to generate strategies to help them stay or get to a certain zone. Grab a poster for your speech room on Social Thinking.
My SDC teacher made this cute visual bulletin board for her classroom. I think it is awesome! She had the different zones and then pasted the emotions that go on the zones as a visual reminder for students.
Look what else they made in the SDC classroom! The SDC teacher grabbed free paint chip samples from Home Depot and had the kids write the different emotions for the zones. She took pictures of the students acting out the different zones and posted them in the classroom.
I dabbled around on the internet in search of some more “Zones” activities and this is what I found!
Free break cards Zones of Regulation Break Cards
Speechy Musings Self Regulation Handouts and Size of the Problem Detectives
A Sprinkle of Speech What size is your problem?
Speech Paths- What Zone Are They In? Interactive Activity for Middle/High School
The Zones of Regulation App (haven’t tried this app yet, but it looks like it could be great)!
Fun with Firsties made a very cool bulletin board in her class with all the ZONES and has some great strategies on how to make a calm down area.
There are visuals in the ZONES book that you can photo copy and use as visuals. The Lower Elementary Cottage made a “tools” book for students to pick a tool for a ZONE to help them get back to green. If they successfully use the tool, they earn a tool coupon in which they can save up to earn a prize.
I used video clips from the movie Elf during the holidays to work on perspective taking and what “zone” people were in. Check out my blog post HERE!
I found some hilarious video clips on youtube from one of my SDC teachers. They show the different zones people can be in using clips from the Big Bang Theory!
Sheldon in the yellow zone! Super funny!!
Love this clip for the blue zone. The kids got a kick out of this. We were also able to talk about how the other character was feeling too and why it may be unexpected to ask a friend to rub Vics on your chest when you are sick.
Red zone with Sheldon! This one made me laugh the most!!
This video is of Sheldon in the green zone. Some of my kiddos could relate to feeling the most calm when they are left alone, lol.
This video has LOTS of Zones going on! I recommend starting the video at about 1:28 seconds because Kevin Hart says “bitch” in the video. My students LOVE Kevin Hart and they sure got more interested about ZONES when we watched this clip. What activities have you done with the Zones of Regulation? I would love to add some more ideas to my stash of tricks!! (68)