Our Family Tree

Another busy day at the Speech Garden Preschool!  We were so busy today that we didn't even have time for our snack!

Bristol and Ryan started their day at the touch and feel pool playing with plastic eggs of different colors.  They pulled them apart, put them together, sorted them, and especially loved pretending to crack them open on my head.  "Oooh, Slimy!" was the word we used that got such a fun reaction!

We welcomed all of the friends in our class during morning circle and continued to learn our calendar and weather concepts. Sometimes it is hard to sit on our carpet squares, so this is a good exercise for gradually increasing our attention span to a specific, structured task.

We were all about our "Dads" today during Language Circle.  We read the book I Love My Daddy by Sebastien Braun, which highlights all of the fun things that children do with their dads.  As I read the book, and we looked at the beautiful illustrations, we acted out the story.  For example, we pretended to eat when it said, "My daddy feeds me" and we got very sleepy when, "My daddy yawns with me" etc.  Bristol and Ryan especially loved it when I pretended to sleep, and they woke me up with a startle!  Lots and lots of eye contact and silly social interaction with this one!

We talked about how dads are boys and moms are girls, and we made a chart with magazine clippings sorting pictures of moms and dads into these two groups.  We also went back to our own personal family boards following the directions, "Where is Bristol's/Ryan's daddy?"

For our art activity today, we made a finger print family tree, labeling all of the leaves with our family member names. Our artwork had both a fine motor component as we colored all around it and a sensory component as we fingerprinted our leaves and talked about how it is okay to be messy!

On the playground today I brought our tunnel and bubbles to share with the other children at Dilworth United Methodist preschool.  Bristol and Ryan both loved going through the tunnel.  We worked on telling the other children that it is "my turn," and we used expanded sentences and signs to request more bubbles. 

Music and singing make language learning fun and bring words to life.  We sing when we transition to a new activity. We sing when we clean up.  We sing when we wash our hands, and when we walk down the hall.  We are always singing.  Try bringing music/singing into your daily routines at home.  With that being said, Bristol and Ryan had a blast during music therapy today.  We sang "When You're Happy and You Know It" while using picture cues expressing all of the specific feelings that we sang about.  We also targeted the words and signs for "please" and "thank you" and "stop" and "go" while we sang and played the instruments.  We also used scarves as we marched, swung, hopped, and put the scarves on our heads, shoulders, and knees.

  

After we ate lunch with the rest of our friends, we always have a short music session at the end of the day.  This week, Bristol and Ryan have loved learning the following song about families:

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  See you on Tuesday!