Five Little Pumpkins

It's Halloween week! I can't believe we are already in the last week of October.  We have lots of fun things planned for this week!  I am so sad to report that Ryan was home sick today, but we hope that he is better and ready to get back in action with us on Thursday!  So, just Bristol began her day as always in the touch and feel pool playing with orange wagon-wheel pasta.  We counted the pasta, took it out of the pool, put it back in the pool, talked about its color and shape, and felt how it is hard before it is cooked.  

Bristol really seemed to enjoy Morning Circle this morning.  We sang one of our favorite songs, "Open and Shut Them."  At the end of the song, we "open up our little mouths, but.....do not let them in!"  During this portion of the song, Bristol imitated opening her mouth and vocalized "aah" with sustained eye contact several trials in a row.  Great progress!   I posted a video of the song, so that you can try this song at home too!

Bristol was busy, as always, on the playground today.  We rolled the ball back and forth through the tunnel to stimulate reciprocal play/turn-taking skills, and I modeled and physically prompted her to sign "my turn" with each turn.  Another little boy on the playground joined us, which made it extra fun and interactive too! Bristol also enjoyed rolling balls down the slide, and we targeted the sign for "go" before letting the ball go and before letting Bristol go down.  

For Language Circle today, we read the book, Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell.  I chose this book, because it was a good review of our apple theme last week, and introduced pumpkins as our new theme this week.  This book follows a little girl and her family as they go to the farm to pick apples and pumpkins.  They pick the apples from a tree and the pumpkins from a vine in the ground and enjoy meeting the animals on the farm.  As we read the book I had several apples and a pumpkin for Bristol to hold and explore.  We talked about how each one felt, the color, and where they come from.  When Bristol saw a duck in the book she said, "quack quack!"

After we finished reading the book, Bristol painted her own pumpkins.  She painted a paper plate orange, and she tolerated having paint on her hands quite nicely. We then used a "soft" pipe cleaner for the pumpkin vine (which she liked to feel on her face), and glued on a brown stem to make a beautiful pumpkin.  

After painting her pumpkin, Bristol used one of the left-over green pipe cleaners from our pumpkin craft and worked on strengthening her fine motor skills by stringing several beads onto the pipe cleaner.  She was very persistent and demonstrated a long attention span for this task.  After her bead work, we decided to get out some shaving cream for some good messy fun!  Bristol was somewhat reluctant to touch the shaving cream, but after a seeing my hands full of it, she quickly became accustomed to having her hands messy too and seemed curious about how it felt.  We traced shapes and letters in the shaving cream as we played with it.  

After a very busy morning with a lot of hard work and one-on-one attention, Bristol was tired, hungry, and very ready for lunch.  Looking forward to seeing everyone back for Halloween fun on Thursday!