Cleaning Resources to Develop Life Skills for Teens and Young Adults with Disabilities.

Spring cleaning is one of my favorite subjects to target life skills for teens and young adults with disabilities. The last week of March is always National Cleaning Week, and is always such a reminder to give my ol’ baseboards a good scrub down, and to clean out some of the food that’s been lingering in the refrigerator and pantry for far too long. During this week, I always love to start a cleaning skills unit with my adolescent and young adult students and clients to encourage them to discuss the names and function of a variety of cleaning tools, sequence cleaning tasks, problem solve cleaning situations, and get lots of practice developing their cleaning skills knowledge.

Our adolescent and young adult students and home health clients we work with are relying on us to help expose them to and teach them a variety of life skills across various settings, so that they may successfully transition out of high school and into group or semi-independent living situations. Incorporating cleaning activities to develop life skills for teens and young adults into our therapy sessions is not only functional, but is extremely relatable to all of us, who can all benefit from a little cleaning skills refresher, especially for those adolescent and young adult students and clients of ours who will go on to pursue incredible careers in this line of work. Here are some of my favorite resources I’ve loved using over the years to develop cleaning skills in adolescents and young adults with disabilities.

Task Cards

This set comes with 20 task box sized cards, where students are shown 3 pictures of household cleaning supplies and asked which cleaning supply should be used during a variety of different tasks. Click on the image below to snag this FREE resource.

Boom Cards™

Cleaning Tools Boom Cards™

These fun and interactive digital task cards consist of 61 cards, all targeting cleaning supplies used during activities of daily living. Activities include: open response with a picture of a cleaning item, yes/no questions with a picture of a cleaning item, multiple choice responses with a selection of 3 cleaning tools to choose from.

Cleaning Tools Associations Memory Match Boom Cards™

This Boom Card™ deck consists of 5 different levels of play where students can practice making associations between familiar cleaning tools involved in their activities of daily living, all while playing a game of memory. Students can click on the cards to turn them over and try to find the associated object with each cleaning tool and then give themselves points using the digital scoreboard!