Gobble Gobble!

It was not a typical day at the Speech Garden today as it was shortened slightly by sharing a feast with our parents!  Thank you to all our parents who were able to join us for lunch! Prior to your arrival, here is a brief summary of how we spent our morning.

We were sad to not have Bristol with us this morning as she was spending the morning with her visiting grandparents!  But Ryan sure enjoyed starting his day at the tables making necklaces out of dyed rotelle pasta.  It was a tricky fine motor task to put the string through the hole, but with a lot of patience, Ryan got the hang of it!  When he tired of this task, he decided it would be more fun to stack several of the pastas on top of each other to make a tall tower, and he thought it was even more fun to knock the towers that I made down.  We also introduced the concept of patterning by alternating the green and orange pasta in a line.

Ryan had lots of one on one attention, and we were able to target almost every single one of his goals.  We started out with our usual morning circle, and we clapped the multi-syllabic days of the week and months of the year.  Ryan is able to identify the written days of the week given an initial sound cue (i.e. "Where is TTTT-Tuesday?), and he is beginning to understand the concepts of yesterday and tomorrow.  We talked about Ryan's family and when asked, "What is your mom's/dad's name?" Ryan responded with "Julie Maltz" and "David Maltz!"

Ryan loves to color and paint at the easel, so this morning we worked on using an appropriate pencil grip to imitate horizontal and vertical lines, and circles.  He is not yet showing a specific hand preference, but was easily able to imitate these lines and shapes.  

Next, we used small vehicles (planes, trains, cars, boats, and buses) of many different colors to work on quantitative concepts of most and least, to sort into the appropriate colored bowls, and to answer a variety of wh-questions (i.e. What is the plane doing? What is that vehicle? Where does it go?).  Ryan loved this activity and probably would have done just this all morning, but we had to leave time for our literacy activity.  

As you probably guessed, our book today was all about Thanksgiving. We read Off to Plymouth Rock by Dandi Daley Mackall.  This very simple rhyming book tells the story of the pilgrims as they leave their native land on the Mayflower ship to find a new home.  It shows the pilgrims struggling to find shelter and food; and how the Native Americans taught them to farm in order to grow their own food. The book ends with the pilgrims and Native Americans sharing the famous meal together, and talks about all the different food that they ate (pumpkins, cranberries, turkey, corn, etc). 

There are cute little turkeys dispersed throughout this book, and it wouldn't be preschool the week of Thanksgiving if we didn't make our own turkeys.  Ryan and I had fun talking about the fall colors used to make the turkey feathers and the colors that are usually used during Thanksgiving.  He glued feathers onto the body, and then added feet, eyes, and a beak.  We used one feather for every letter in his name, which he easily helped me spell.  We finished up our literacy activity by making pilgrim hats to wear to the Thanksgiving feast with our parents.  Ryan glued the white stripe and yellow buckle onto his hat.  He saw a pilgrim on the "November" strip on our calendar and made the connection that he was making the same hat!  Ryan did a great job but decided that he did not want to wear his hat to the Thanksgiving feast.  

We all enjoyed having lunch with the parents today.  Thank you so much for coming!  We hope you enjoyed singing some of our favorite songs and meeting some of our friends.  I am so thankful for Ryan and Bristol and for getting an opportunity to be a part of their learning!  Thank you for sharing your sweet children with us.  I hope you have a safe and very Happy Thanksgiving!  

These were two short Thanksgiving songs that Ryan especially enjoyed today!

Firemen!

Who knew so many different skills could be targeted with a touch and feel pool full of colorful eggs and plastic frogs?  We worked on colors, matched the top and bottom of the eggs, and used fine motor skills to get the top and bottom to fit just right.  We also used fine motor skills to push the tail of the frog to get it to hop, and we pretended to make the frogs hatch out of the eggs.  We also pretended that the eggs were real as I cracked them on Bristol and Ryan's heads and felt the eggs "ooze" down their hair and faces.  Once I opened that can of worms, it was hard to get all the kiddos to stop with that pretend play...so silly and so fun!

 On the playground today, Ryan was all about "starting his engine" as he initiated play with another little boy to race shopping carts around in circles.  After a while, they decided it was more fun to just crash their carts into each other.  Boys will be boys.... Bristol took it upon herself to try to stack her favorite balls on top of each other, but soon figured out that this was not going to work very well.  Great problem solving skills in action!  They both thoroughly enjoyed a good game of chase which ended with me picking them up and spinning them around in circles.  We had great eye contact and used great social interaction skills to request this game over and over again!

For Language Circle today we read the book, Fire Engines by Anne Rockwell.  I don't know a single child that doesn't have a fascination with firetrucks, and both Bristol and Ryan were very attentive during this story.  This book tells the story of a dalmatian puppy who wants to be a fireman, and he takes the reader for a tour of the firehouse pointing out the different types of trucks, ladders, pumps, hoses, hydrants, sirens, and flashing lights.  As always, we used picture cues to further comprehension.  After reading the book we made our own 5 Little Firemen.  Using Bristol and Ryan's handprints in red paint, we added circular heads on each finger, red hats, a hose, and painted some blue water coming out of the hose.  Surprisingly, neither one of them minded having their hands painted or being messy!  Then we read a short poem that went went with our artwork.

Once we finished our masterpieces, Bristol and Ryan wanted to continue using do-a-dot paints to create their own pictures, and then we got out some play dough for some more fine motor strengthening play.  We made circles by pressing the tops of the play-dough containers into the dough.  We rolled the dough into balls and pushed them back and forth to each other, using our signs and words for "go!".  Then we created snakes, alligators, giraffes, dinosaurs, and Christmas trees.  What an assortment of random items that kept them totally engaged and attentive!      

It was such a great day for both kiddos today.  Have a wonderful weekend!  We are looking forward to learning all about Thanksgiving and turkeys on Tuesday and can't wait to share a feast with all the parents and kids.   

Police Hurrying! Helping! Saving!

The touch and feel pool was busy this morning as Bristol and Ryan joined the rest of the kiddos manipulating all sorts of colorful geometric shapes.  They enjoyed making new shapes as they put several different shapes together.  We learned the names and colors of the different shapes...diamond, octagon, square, and triangle...to name a few.  

This week we continue our theme surrounding community helpers...specifically policemen and firemen.  It was a big day at the Speech Garden today because a REAL policeman came to visit us!  Before we met him in the church parking lot, we introduced the concept of "policemen" with our book of the day Police Hurrying! Helping! Saving! by Patricia Hubell.  This book talks about all of the things that policemen and women do to keep us safe...solving crimes by looking at fingerprints, chasing burglars, directing traffic, helping children cross the street safely, and using and training German Shepherds for searching and finding.  It also talks about all of the different modes of transportation that are used by policemen...motorcycles, bikes, cars, horses, and boats.  As always, we used picture cues as we read the book to aid in comprehension.  We also used these pictures to teach all the different parts of the policeman's uniform...badge, handcuffs, flashlight, and hat.

After we read the book, we were very ready to meet the policeman in person! The kids were so excited as we walked out to the parking lot because Officer Wade had the flashing lights of his cruiser moving and all the doors open.  We all sat on the sidewalk as he taught us about all the things that police do to keep us safe.  They direct traffic, help children cross the street safely, and go after bad guys.  We also learned that policemen are our friends, and we can always go to them if we are lost.  He talked to us about all the different parts of his uniform...his hat, badge, and handcuffs; and showed us his special walkie talkie that even had other policemen speaking to him in a special secret code!  Officer Wade took all the children over to his cruiser and pointed out the word P-O-L-I-C-E written on it in big letters.  He explained that every police car has a special number and that the blue lights and siren tell people to slow down and get out of the way so that policemen can get to others who may need help or who may not be following the rules!  Bristol and Ryan each took a turn sitting in the cruiser.  As a grand finale to his visit, Officer Wade left everyone a special gold police badge sticker, coloring books, and crayons; and he blared the siren one last time.  Ryan said that "it hurt his ears!"  What a great visit!  A big THANK YOU to Officer Wade! 

     

After we thanked Officer Wade and said goodbye, it was time for us to head to the playground.  Bristol and Ryan used sidewalk chalk to make beautiful designs on the rubber floor outside.  We wrote their names, and drew many different types of lines and scribbles.  All the other children had fun joining in too!

With very runny noses from the chilly weather, we came inside to get to work on our arts and crafts.  We reviewed our book of the day about policemen to remind us of all that we learned with Officer Wade.  For art, we made our own traffic lights, because police make sure we obey the laws and follow traffic lights appropriately!  To make the traffic lights, we glued red, yellow, and green circles to long brown rectangles.  We learned that red means "stop," yellow means "wait," and green means "go" and paired them with the signs for those words that we have been targeting since the beginning of the school year.  It was also a great way to target color and shape vocabulary, and to continue to learn that a little glue on our hands definitely will not hurt us!  Officer Bristol Barrows and Officer Ryan Maltz also had time to make their own police badges by gluing all the parts together!

As you can see, it was such a fun and busy day learning about policemen!  Looking forward to seeing sweet Bristol and Ryan on Thursday to learn all about firemen!

Bark George!

Feathers were flying at the touch and feel this morning.  All the kiddos thoroughly enjoyed throwing the feathers up and watching them glide slowly back to the ground.  We learned that feathers can be many different colors.  We talked about how birds have feathers to keep them warm and to help them fly.  We also talked about how all the feather dust in our classroom air could make us sneeze!  Achoo!

Our book of the day was Bark, George by Jules Feiffer.  This is a funny little story about a dog named George who has an unfortunate problem.  Instead of barking, George meows like a cat, quacks like a duck, oinks like a pig, and moos like a cow.  His very concerned mother takes him to a vet who proceeds to pull each of these farm animals out of George's mouth until finally George is able to bark like a dog.  But...when George walks outside to a long line of people and is asked to bark, George responds with "Hello!"  To aid in comprehension, we used picture cues of all the animals mentioned in the book.  

After our story, Bristol and Ryan enjoyed making George puppets.  They glued on all the parts of George's face...his ears, eyes, nose, and tongue.  We then tried to re-enact the story by pulling pictures of each animal out of George's mouth.  It was a little abstract for our kiddos, but still fun and a great review of our farm animals and their corresponding sounds.

I accidentally left the camera in our classroom while we were on the playground, so I don't have any fun pictures today.  It was a chilly morning, but that didn't stop Bristol from playing with the balls on the slide; and it didn't stop Ryan from "starting his engine" (his words!) as he raced shopping carts with another little girl around and around and around!

Sadly, we had our last music session with Ms. Gretchen and Ms. Kylie this morning.  We continued to sing songs about community helpers (policemen, firemen, doctors, dentists, and veterinarians).  We also pretended to be a variety of sea creatures; and we used the scarves to "swim" through the water like a jelly fish, a sea turtle, and a fish.  Bristol and Ryan loved using the shakers to "Shake their Sillies Out," and we ended the session singing our good-bye song and playing the guitar (always a favorite!).  We truly hope that we will have some new music therapy students to sing and dance with next semester.  

Hope you have a wonderful weekend.  See you next week to learn all about police officers and firemen!