SENISS
Special Educational Needs and Inclusion Support Service
4 | P a g e
Stage 1 – The Bucket Stage
The first stage teaches children to focus their attention on the
adult-led agenda quickly. We want the children to be irresistibly
drawn to the bucket and its contents
The ‘bucket’ is a non-see-through container/bag, that holds a
selection of small objects such as; wind-up, pop-up, musical or
mechanical toys the children will find visually appealing, but
which they have never seen before. Novelty value is key, so you
need to build up a collection of lots of different items to maintain the element of surprise.
During this difficult time, you may need to be creative and adapt/decorate general
household items such as sunglasses, hats, kitchen rolls, plastic bottles, containers etc. to
create visually stimulating items and musical instruments.
Environment - clear the environment of distractions and seat your child opposite you.
Structure- In keeping with good visual communication practice, you start
by drawing a bucket on a little whiteboard or piece of paper and write
‘bucket’ underneath. Then you set the scene by singing the bucket song
before taking the lid off the bucket and pulling out one of its secrets.
Language - Try to keep your language to a minimum at this point because you want your
child to look at the object, pay attention to it and engage with visually. You will be looking at
it also and so you will all have the same-shared experience. For example,
you might just say, “Light spinner” when you bring it out of the bucket.
Then you put it back in the bucket and pick out something else. It takes
maybe two or three minutes to do three objects in a row. Then you say:
‘It’s finished,’ sign ‘finished’ and cross the bucket off on the board and
move on to whatever else the children were doing. It might be helpful to follow the bucket
activity with a favourable activity such as snack.
Rules – Don’t be tempted to hand the toys/objects over to your child, they must remain
special.
Likewise, avoid including anything in the bucket that your child already possess and love
playing with. Imagine the distress of a child, whose special interest is Peppa Pig, when they
sees their favourite toy held up in front of him, but out of bounds!