You Are Invited to Our Holiday Show!

Please come and enjoy our Holiday Show on Thursday at 10:30!

Christmas is Coming!

There's lots of holiday fun and excitement in the air at the Speech Garden as we prepare for our Holiday program.  We really hope that you all will be able to make it for our performance and Holiday Village.  It's going to be a super fun time to share with your child, and also a great opportunity to promote speech and language skills during the activities that we have planned.  So with that being said, Bristol and Ryan spent a lot of time this morning practicing for their performance.  They are really starting to learn the songs, and they are having a lot of fun doing it.  Now who knows whether or not they will perform with 30+ parents watching them, but regardless, they will definitely look cute trying!

The touch and feel pool today was full of pop-blocks.  We talked about all the different colors.  We pulled them apart and pushed them together.  We sorted all the different colors to make red towers or white towers, etc.  We also practiced making patterns with different colors.

It's been two weeks since we saw our friends from DUMC preschool on the playground because of weather and various "Out and Abouts."  Ryan and Bristol seemed very excited to see their playground buddies.  We played with our usual balls, cars, and bubbles; and they seemed to really enjoy creating chalk art.

This is Ryan's rainbow!

Bristol enjoyed making circles round and around!

Today we read Christmas is Coming by Claire Masurel.  This book shows a little girl named Juliette preparing for Christmas with her family as they pick out the perfect Christmas tree, trim the tree, bake cookies, and make decorations.  Juliette does this with all of her favorite stuffed animals "helping" her.  Juliette and her friends are super excited when they see Santa flying in the sky with his reindeer, and they are even more excited when they see all the fun surprises that Santa left them under the tree.  

After we read our book, Bristol and Ryan enjoyed sponge-painting green Christmas trees with red ornaments.  We repeated the phrases "lift it up" and "push it down" as we made each green tree.  Then they used "do-a-dot" paints to add the ornaments.  

I'm looking forward to seeing all of you on Thursday for our last day of school in 2013!  Remember to practice your dancing Christmas tree song so that our performance on Thursday is a huge success!

A Trip To The Singing Bears

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

Today we were all about Christmas Trees, and Bristol and Ryan started their morning touching and feeling Christmas tree branches.  We talked about how good they smelled, and we compared long ones and short ones.  We wondered how many needles were on each branch and thought that the needles on the branches felt a little pointy, but also tickled our hands when we brushed against them.  We also thought it was fun to hide behind them!  Everyone also had a lot to say about the Christmas Trees that they have at home.

Where is Ryan?

This branch feels pointy!

Over the next two weeks we will be working very hard on the songs that we will be singing for the Christmas program.  So after a short morning circle, we learned some new Christmas songs. We then headed out to a very wet playground.  But, that didn't stop us from having a ton of fun!  We were the only children on the two-year old playground to brave the damp weather today, so we had the whole thing to ourselves.  What a treat!  The humidity was perfect for bubbles that hung around us and all over the ground for some good popping and stomping!

We all had great eye contact and smiles during a good game of chase as Ryan and I pushed shopping carts together to try to catch Bristol!  We also did the usual fun with balls as we put them through tunnels and down wet slides.  It was a perfect way to target vocabulary for "wet" and "splash!"  Ryan and Bristol also opened a concession stand where they were selling pizza.  

Good wet fun! Splash!

After getting fresh diapers and clothes from our adventures outside, we headed to our room for language circle.  Our book today was Christmas Tree by Wendell and Florence Minor.  This sweet rhyming book challenges the reader to imagine what type of Christmas tree he/she might be...a tree at the top of a lighthouse or the Statue of Liberty? a tree in a tiny mouse hole? a singing Christmas tree? or a tree just for cats, dogs, or horses to name a few.

After reading our book, we made our own Christmas trees using construction paper of basic shapes.  We glued green triangles of different sizes to make the tree (working on terms big, bigger, biggest), a brown square for the trunk, a yellow star, and multi-color circles as the ornaments.  We reviewed all of these shapes and colors and counted them as we glued them all together to make a beautiful Christmas tree!

While Bristol was finished her tree, Ryan enjoyed playing with the cat & mouse puppets!

                                     

We finished up our Christmas Tree theme by watching the Dancing Christmas Tree Song.  Feel free to play this and practice at home because you just might see it again at the Christmas program!

We spent the rest of our morning making a special Christmas present for mommy and daddy and eating lunch with our other Speech Garden friends.  I am really looking forward to Bristol and Ryan's first official "Out and About" to see the Singing Bears on Thursday!  

Run! Run! As Fast as You Can...

The touch and feel was all about red, blue, and green letters today.  We talked about the color of the letters and found all of the letters in both Ryan and Bristol's names.  We also worked on producing the sound that each letter made.

The rainy weather kept us off the playground today, but we were invited to socialize and work in centers with the Busy Beginners and Terrific Transitions.  Bristol and Ryan both enjoyed strengthening their fine motor skills using lacing cards and also playing with hard clay that we shaped into long and short snakes, and mama, daddy, and baby snakes.  We made big and small balls out of the clay and attempted to roll them back and forth to each other.  Bristol stacked several balls on top of each other, which we called a snowman!  Ryan also enjoyed rolling trucks through different shaped pasta with another friend.  The rain cleared just long enough for us to get some fresh air and walk around the block.  All the kiddos enjoyed looking at Christmas decorations, and we noticed that some houses still had their pumpkins out.  We saw leaves falling and tons of acorns on the sidewalk, which we decided would make the squirrels very happy!  The highlight of the walk was definitely splashing in the millions of puddles.  Sorry about the extra laundry today!  

 After some much needed fresh air and exercise, we changed our puddle-soaked clothes and got ready for language circle.  We eased into the holiday season today by reading The Gingerbread Man retold by Eric A. Kimmel.  The repetitive nature of this classic fairytale was a great way to target action verbs run and catch in addition to common farm animals pig, dog, cow, horse, and fox.  

Instead of using pictures to further comprehension, we used finger puppets that went along with the story, which were a huge hit with Bristol and Ryan!  Once we practiced re-telling the story with our finger puppets, Bristol and Ryan enjoyed making their own gingerbread men.  They used stickers for the eyes, puff balls for the buttons, and added a smile with markers.  They each added their own creative touch with do-a-dot paints.  

We concluded our gingerbread unit with a short video found on YouTube. 

After language circle, Bristol and Ryan loved playing with their own big tubs of water.  Each tub was full of small, colorful farm animals and also had several bowls and cups.  They poured water back and forth between cups and bowls, made waterfalls that fell from the sky back into the tub.  They gave the animals a bath and made them swim and splash in a pool.  They practiced the animal sounds, and we also talked about which farm animals were in our Gingerbread story today.  There was almost as much water on them and on the floor as there was in the tub...resulting in change of clothes #2.  Sorry once again for the additional laundry today, but they sure had fun and weren't even aware that they were learning at the same time!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  I can't wait to see Bristol and Ryan on Tuesday to learn all about Christmas Trees!

The Mail Must Go Through...

It was so great to see all the kiddos back at school today after our Thanksgiving break!  The touch and feel pool was full of pipe cleaners and tons of colorful beads.  Bristol and Ryan put their fine motor skills to work making bracelets by pushing the pipe cleaners through the beads.  They also enjoyed counting them and hearing the sound that the beads make when you throw them in the air and let them fall back into the pool.  There were a few beads that also had letters on them, and Ryan thoroughly enjoyed trying to find the letters in his name.  

We conclude our theme of community helpers by learning all about mail carriers.  This week's book, My New Town by Kristen Hall is a great summary of most of the community helpers that we have learned about over the last month.  The main character of the story talks all about moving to a new town.  He introduces each community helper that he meets in his new town...his new teacher, police officer, dentist, barber, mail carrier, and finally his new baby sister.    

After we read our book, Bristol and Ryan colored their moms and dads a beautiful picture.  We addressed envelopes with their address, folded the picture, put it in the envelope, and added a stamp.  Instead of playing on the playground today, Miss Margaret joined us for a walk to the mailbox down the street to send our letters to mom and dad.  It was a beautiful day for a walk and a great opportunity to build our vocabulary with different things that we saw along the way.  Bristol and Ryan saw garbage trucks, a firetruck, a police car, freight trucks, cars, and lots of leaves.  Ryan especially loved the garbage truck as it dumped a can right in front of us, and Bristol especially loved throwing the leaves in the air and watching them fall back down.  They each opened the mailbox and dropped their letters into the mailbox, which we pointed out said, "US MAIL."  Be on the lookout for your special delivery in the next couple of days and take some time to review our lesson!

After we got back from our adventure to the mailbox, we made our own mail trucks.  Bristol and Ryan glued the U.S. Postal Service logo onto their trucks, added some wheels and some red and blue stripes, and then glued themselves in the windows as the drivers!  

Because of Bristol and Ryan's love for balls of any kind, I brought a new ball run to school today for free center play, which they both absolutely loved.  It was a great lesson for sharing and not snatching and a great way to work on requesting more balls with words and sign.    

Looking forward to seeing Bristol and Ryan on Thursday as we introduce the Christmas season with the Gingerbread Man!