An Apple a Day....

All the kids were surprised that the touch and feel pool was not out today.  However, they found our sensory element of the day at every seat of the table...gluten-free pumpkin play-dough!  At first, Bristol and Ryan were not sure how they felt about this slightly more grainy textured play-dough.  But after a quick warm up, they throughly enjoyed making snakes, worms, snowmen, balls, and lots of pancakes!  Super fun!

Bristol and Ryan were especially interactive on the playground today with each other and with the other children.  They tried to see how many balls they could get on the slide at one time.  Ryan enjoyed pretending to serve me and Bristol lemonade and hot dogs at his "restaurant window."  They had a blast going through the tunnel and as always, rolling the balls back and forth.   

After a very busy time on the playground, we headed inside for some fun with apples!

Today we read I Am An Apple by Jean Marzollo.  This book takes the reader through the life cycle of an apple from a bud to flower to fruit to market to table.  After we finished reading the book, we held several different types and colors of apples.  We cut into an apple and talked about its seeds, the skin, the flesh, the core, and how it felt and tasted.  Then we glued red scraps of construction paper to a paper plate, added a brown stem, and a green leaf and ended up with beautiful homemade apples of our own.

This week's theme was a perfect opportunity to make homemade applesauce.  We talked about the ingredients that we would need to make our applesauce.  We counted four apples, which we cored, seeded, sliced, and placed into a blender.  We then added 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  As Bristol and Ryan held the lemons, we talked about how they felt, labeled the yellow color, and tasted them.  Ryan actually LOVED the sour lemons while Bristol decided to pass on the taste-test!  We blended our ingredients for about 1 minute and out came delicious applesauce!  After serving our applesauce into cups, Bristol and Ryan each tasted the product of their labor...mixed reactions were held by all, but I thought it was delicious!

For the finale of our apple language circle we watched the following short video....

Bristol and Ryan had another great day!  Just a reminder that we do not have school on Thursday due to parent-teacher conferences.  Be on the lookout for your child's Therapeutic Education Plan being sent to you via email this evening so that you have plenty of time to review it prior to your scheduled conference.  Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday to discuss Bristol and Ryan's great progress thus far!