Why I Love Smarty Symbols!

Visual supports are a huge part of my daily life. I use them with my children, my students, and even for myself. Like many of my students, I am a visual learner. Research shows that visuals help us retrieve and retain information better. Words are something that are abstract. So when we can provide a visual support for a child, they have a better chance of understanding the concept.

On a regular basis I use visual schedules and supports with my students. I enjoyed creating these to use in therapy, at school, to create activities for TpT, and visuals to use at home. The hard part has always been finding clip art that relates to the activities I need to add to the product. It's not so easy to find clipart out there for remembering to put the lid back on the peanut butter jar or going to speech therapy. Which is why I was so excited when I learned about Smarty Symbols.

Smarty Symbols is a huge library of symbols and images that teaches and therapists would use on a regular basis. And when I say huge, I mean huge. They currently have over 19,000 images available. I have used Smarty Symbols to create countless visuals for my students such as: 

-Visual reminders

-Classroom rules

-Schedules

-Sentence strips

-Games

-Therapy activities

-Vocabulary cards

-Sequencing

-Step by step directions

...just to name a few

Smarty Symbols has been a great tool to have right at my fingertips. In addition to being able to create you own visuals on their website, there is an activity library where you can share and download materials other educators have created! It's a fantastic community of educators.

You can learn more about Smarty Symbols and their memberships by visiting their website, here. But guess what?! They are letting me give a 1 year personal subscription to Smarty Symbols to one of you! How exciting is that? Enter below, winners will be announced Monday!

a Rafflecopter giveaway