5 Little Penguins

We are super excited to have Ryan back this week, and we are so glad that he is finally feeling better.  This week we are learning all about animals in winter...specifically PENGUINS!

Both boys were greeted by unit cubes in the touch and feel pool.  Unit cubes are small blocks that connect and are made of many different colors.  Ryan and Ethan built huge towers with their cubes. We counted them, made patterns with them, made letters out of them, and as we put them away everyone sorted them by making tall towers of each color.

After a very busy time at the touch and feel, we headed to our room for morning circle.  Just to review: most of the songs that we sing during morning circle target calendar concepts.  So you can practice at home, here is a short video of the song that we sing to help us learn the days of the week.   

We decided to get a little fresh air today, and we braved the cold weather for a very short 15 minutes. We were sad to see that the snow was not yet falling.  Ryan and Ethan didn't even seem cold on the playground as they raced shopping carts after officially starting the race with "Ready. Set. Go!" They had an absolute blast and thoroughly enjoyed crashing their carts into the fence and into each other.  Boys will be boys......We also kicked balls, went down the slide, and pushed the giant dump truck all around the playground.

Our book today was Five Little Penguins Slipping on the Ice by Steven Metzger.  This book tells the sweet story of five little penguins who slip, slide, skate, play, and jump on the ice; but the group of penguins gets smaller and smaller as each one gets hurt on the ice.  Their mama calls the doctor and the doctor says, "No more penguins slipping on the ice!"

After we read the book, we sang our own Five Little Penguin Song using a special booklet that I made with the five penguins labeled 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. The song and booklet were great materials to use to target temporal/numeric concepts while further emphasizing our new penguin vocabulary!  Both Ryan and Ethan will each get a turn bringing the booklet home for further practice.   

We then headed to the art table to create our own penguins using paper plates and construction paper. First, Ryan and Ethan glued scraps of construction paper to a paper plate to act as the penguin's wings.  Second, they glued on the penguin's bill.  Third, they colored his head black, and last they glued the head to the body to make a beautiful penguin! As you can imagine our vocabulary words that were repeated numerous times during this activity were: PENGUIN, STICK ON, STICKY,  and MORE GLUE PLEASE.

Wh-questions to ask your kiddos today:
What did you make during art today? penguins
How many penguins were slipping on the ice? five
Who had to call the doctor for the penguins? mama
Where did you race shopping carts? on the playground

After finishing our penguins and doing a quick clean-up, we joined the rest of the Speech Garden for lunch.  The topic of snow was definitely the talk of the classroom today.  We felt that it was absolutely necessary to do a snow dance before we left in order to help the snow along.  It was hilarious watching eighteen 2 through 5 year olds stomp, sing, and dance to the following song:

Hopefully it will work! It sure would be fun to play in the snow tomorrow!  See you all on Thursday as we learn all about bears and hibernation.  

More Snowmen!

It was another great day at the Speech Garden!  Unfortunately, Ryan was still under the weather today, but we are hoping to see him good as new next week.  As a result, Ethan had lots of one-on-one attention, and he is probably getting very tired of me!

During open centers, Ethan tends to gravitate toward the train track, but today I tried to broaden his play and language with a farm puzzle and the ball run.  When completing the farm puzzle, I noticed that he readily produces the sounds that each farm animal makes, but has more difficulty answering the question, "Who says oink-oink?" or "Who says neigh-neigh?"...so this might be something that can be practiced at home with other puzzles.

With the ball run, my main goal was to continue to increase his length of utterance by modeling, "balls down!" or "down down down!", "up, up, up," and "more balls down (as a request)" and then to have him look at me and repeat it after my model.  Ethan was very easy-going and readily repeated these phrases after my model.  The clarity of his speech suffers as the length of his utterances get longer...but this will improve with lots of practice, and he is showing such great progress in just the 3 short weeks that he has been here!

The two-year-old playground was open today, but none of the other kids from DUMC were out, so after a short time Ethan and I headed back to the big playground so that he could have some peer interaction.  Ethan enjoyed playing in a Little Tikes car, and we targeted use of the words: stop, go, open door and close door.  He also continued to try to plow the entire playground with his big bulldozer.

In keeping with our snowman theme, our book today was The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.  This book tells the story of a boy named James who builds a big snowman and much to his surprise, his snowman comes alive!  The book continues to show all the fun adventures that James and the snowman have together.

After we read the book, we headed to the art table where we first colored the parts of the snowman and then outlined him with marshmallows.  During art, Ethan was required to request using "I want more." "More glue."  "More please." It was a great test of his attention span and fine motor skills as he carefully stuck each marshmallow along the dotted line. We talked about the color of the marshmallows and how they felt - "sticky" and modeled the phrase "stick it on!"  We also talked about all the different parts of the snowman and how we made him using three circles.

After we finished crafting, we had just enough time to create with play-dough!  We made big balls and little balls, big snakes and little snakes, alligators, stars, monkeys, and bunnies.  We targeted shapes, colors, and answering the question "how many?" as we counted our animals. 

I have noticed over the last 3 weeks that Ethan is very "tuned-in" to background noises (i.e. bells ringing, music playing, sirens blaring, or even phones ringing).  He always puts his hand to his ear and looks at me, commenting through gestures that he hears something.  When he does this, I have him repeat "I hear..." after my model so eventually he will learn how to produce these words so that he can comment verbally.  

Things to work on at home this week: 

1. Answering the Wh- question Who? 

2. Answering the question How many?

3. Provide a model of a 2-3 word utterance and have him look at you and repeat it. 

4. Model the I hear.... when the opportunity presents itself.  

Have a great weekend.  See you next Tuesday as we learn all about animals during the winter!

  

Ethan's Snowman

So we've learned about what happens in winter, and we've learned about the kind of clothes that we need to wear in winter.  Now, this week we are going to learn about one of the most fun things about winter and snow...SNOWMEN!

Poor Ryan had a bad cold and fever today.  We missed his sweet face, but really hope that he is feeling better soon and that he will back in action on Thursday!  Ethan was greeted by wiki sticks again today in the touch and feel pool.  We sure had a blast creating all sorts of fun designs.  We made race cars, snowmen, balls, glasses, and people.  It was really tricky to pull all of the wiki sticks apart when we were all finished--a super fine motor strengthening exercise!

We joined the big kids out on the main playground today.  Ethan was particularly impressed with a large bulldozer, and I think it was his mission to try to plow the entire playground!  He went from one end of the playground to another scooping up wood chips into the bulldozer shovel.  He also loved riding the merry-go-round bikes around and around in circles.

 Our book today was Nick's Snowman by Annette Smith.  This book tells the story of Nick and Sally as they head outside to make a snowman in the newly fallen snow.  Nick and Sally become increasingly frustrated by two dogs who keep trying to steal the sticks that they are using for the snowman's arms.  They repeated "Go Away!" several times throughout the book in an attempt to get the dogs to leave their sticks alone.  Consequently, I was able to get Ethan to repeat "go away" several times as we read the book.

After we read our book we headed to the art table to make our own snowman.  First, we counted out three circles and glued them together, using a picture of Ethan's face as the snowman's head.  Then we added a hat, scarf, arms, and a carrot nose.  We targeted the following vocabulary words while we read the book and completed our snowman: snowman, hat, mittens, buttons, eyes, nose, mouth, sticks, and circle.  I have observed that Ethan's speech clarity improves when he is given a model and when he is required to look at the speaker's face before having him imitate a word.  As I have mentioned in previous blogs, clapping the syllables of multi-syllabic words also helps improve speech intelligibility.

After we finished with arts and crafts, I taught Ethan a new song as we dressed another special snowman.  Here is the first verse (To the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It"):

Mr. Snowman needs a hat needs a hat.

Mr. Snowman needs a hat needs a hat.

Mr. Snowman needs a hat, yes he really needs a hat.

Mr. Snowman needs a hat needs a hat.

Then the song continues with the same words except substitute the other parts of the snowman in place of "hat." (i.e. Mr. Snowman needs some eyes, needs some eyes....).  After we sang the song a few times, I paused when singing it again to see if Ethan could fill in the words himself.  He readily labelled "hat," "eyes," and "mouth" spontaneously and was willing to imitate "nose," "buttons," and "mittens" after I gave him a model.  This "fill in the blank" method is a great strategy to promote language while singing familiar songs.  

Our finished product!

For our snowman finale, we watched this short snowman video.

Looking forward to another fun day on Thursday as we continue to learn more about snowmen!

Mittens

The Touch and Feel pool was full of geometric shapes of all different colors.  We made houses, snowmen, bicycles, and race cars.  We put two different colors together to see what new color could be made.  We also looked through the shapes and saw that everything we looked at turned blue, or green, or red, or yellow!

Ryan and Ethan were all about playing with the train track during open center time today.  They also enjoyed playing with the farm blocks and tractors.  Throughout the whole morning at the Speech Garden, I am constantly prompting Ryan and Ethan to expand their utterances.  I have never forgotten the advice given to me by one of my professors in graduate school---when working with small children with speech and language delay, you should always challenge them to say 1 more word then they are currently using.  So, for example, if your child comments on an airplane that he sees in the sky by saying, "Plane!"  You respond with, "Big plane" or "Loud plane." If your child says 1 word, you model the same utterance with a 2 word expansion....Say one, add one. Also, with Ryan and Ethan, I model the longer sentence and then prompt them to imitate my longer utterance.  Just your little speech and language tip of the day!

When we went outside to the two-year-old playground today, we found that it was taped off with caution tape and in major repair.  So we got to play on the big playground, which was actually quite a treat!  Ryan and Ethan spent most of their time playing with trucks in a large sandbox.  It was Ryan's mission to line up all of the big trucks, and Ethan liked rolling the trucks up the wall of the play  equipment, and then shooting them down the slide!

 So we continued to learn all about winter clothes today...specifically mittens.  Our book today was One Mitten by Kristine O'Connell George.  This book tells the story of a little girl and all of the fun things that she likes to do with her mittens-wave hello, make shadow shapes, pat her pet, clap, flap, and hold hands...to name a few.

After we read our book, we made our own set of mittens, connected by a piece of yarn so that we wouldn't lose them!  First, Ryan and Ethan colored the mittens and the mitten cuff.  Second, they glued the cuff to the mitten, and last they attached the yarn with a stapler.  I didn't get a picture of the stapling action, but if you use these pictures to ask them how they made the mittens, it will give them a visual support to help answer the questions.

1. What did you do first to make the mittens?

2. What did you do second to make the mittens?

3. What did you do last to make the mittens.  

First, we colored the mittens.

Second, we glued the cuff to the mitten.

As always, we concluded our language circle with a brief song to help review and tie it all together once more.  Ryan and Ethan also got a chance to dress me up in some winter clothes.  We reviewed all the winter attire that we learned this week as they put each item of clothing on me.  Happily, I don't have a picture of myself wearing two hats, a coat, scarf, and mittens!

Hope you all have a great weekend.  Next week we will be talking all about snowmen, and we have some really fun activities planned!

                                                                  

Winter Clothes

Ryan and Ethan were greeted by cotton "snowballs" and snowflakes at the Touch and Feel pool today as we continued to learn all about winter.  We talked about the color of the snowballs and how they felt, and we counted the six sides to the snowflake stickers and described them as being sparkly and sticky on one side.  Some kiddos pretended to have a small snowball fight in the pool and others made the snowflakes fall from the sky.  

We didn't let the weather get us down today!  After our morning circle and open center time, we headed outside for a Squirrel Hunt as we walked around the block to get some fresh air.  The language stimulation opportunities are endless on a simple walk around the block.  We didn't spot as many squirrels as we had intended and decided that they were all staying in away from the bad weather.  But we did see 3 little ones scamper across the street and perched high in a tree.  We answered questions like, "What do squirrels eat?" (acorns), Where do they live? (in nests high in the trees), How do they stay warm? (by wrapping their tails around themselves like a blanket.  We found a million acorns and examined them (see below) and put the acorn hats on!  You can find these treasures and probably a few more in Ryan and Ethan's pockets where we decided to keep them safe! When Ryan and Ethan spotted a squirrel high in a tree, they decided it would be fun to try to shake the squirrel out of the tree.  But the tree was too big and too heavy!

Acorn examination

Look, this acorn has a hat!

Squirrels! Where are you?

We found a squirrel nest high in the tree!

There's a squirrel! High in the tree!

On our walk, we splashed in many wet puddles (Sorry for the wet clothes today! Don't forget to pack more on Thursday!), and we heard airplanes, sirens, and even spotted our favorite garbage truck again.  This particular truck even gave us a "beep beep!" as it drove by us.  We also spotted some beautiful green moss and lichen on a big tree and we talked about its color and how it felt like a soft carpet.  Ryan was super excited when he found a small hole in the same tree, and he was sure that it was a bunny hole.  We discussed all the other possible animals that could live in that hole too...a mouse, a chipmunk, etc.  As we ended our walk, we found a yellow fire hydrant, and talked about how the firefighters use it.  So as you can see, it was a very eventful and productive walk around the block; and Ryan and Ethan had a blast!

Ethan feeling the soft moss

Ryan's bunny hole.

So we have had a lot of practice over the last two weeks putting on all the different winter attire that we use to keep warm, but we thought we would further emphasize the vocabulary for winter clothes this week.  Our book today was Boots by Anne Schreiber.  This is a great repeating line book (which aids in memory when learning new words) about a child at school who is putting on all the different pieces of winter clothing before heading outside. Each page introduces a new piece of winter clothing while repeating the previous piece of clothing.  When the child finally finishes putting on all the winter clothes, her teacher says that it's time to come in!  Ryan and Ethan were introduced to the following winter clothes: boots, sweater, hat, scarf, coat, and mittens.  

After reading the book, we headed to the art table to decorate our own winter hats.  Ryan and Ethan enjoyed finding the letters in their name and gluing it to their hat.  They added beautiful snowflakes and cotton balls for the puff ball on top of their hat.   

Then we got out some shaving cream and created some designs in the "snow." We talked about the color of the shaving cream and how it felt.  We wrote our names in the shaving cream and practiced making a variety of different shapes.  We also used cookie cutters to make the shape of an alligator and a giraffe.  By the time we were finished, Ryan and Ethan had shaving cream up to their elbows and smelled freshly shaven!    

So it was another great day at the Speech Garden.  Here are a few questions to ask your kiddos about their day.  It's a great way to work on answering the tricky WH-questions!

1. What do squirrels eat? acorns

2. Where do squirrels live? nests

3. How many garbage trucks did you see on your walk? two

4. Who might live in a hole in a tree? bunny, mouse, chipmunk....

See you all on Thursday as we continue to talk about winter clothes.  

Also, here's a favorite snowflake video that Ethan and Ryan love!

Winter Wonderland

So, we've only had two really cold days this winter, and I'm ready for winter to be over...but not at the Speech Garden!  Today, we continued to learn all about winter.

Ryan and Ethan started their morning playing with Wiki Sticks at the touch and feel pool.  These long, sticky, multi-color sticks can be shaped and molded into just about anything.  We talked about all the different colors, and we made snowmen, people, balls, shapes, hearts, etc.

 It was a brisk but beautiful morning to play on the playground.  We introduced Ethan to our friends from Dilworth United Methodist preschool, and he and Ryan had a blast doing all sorts of things together.  They pushed big trucks and shopping carts.  They played in the playhouse, went down the slide, and played chase.  We also found some ice on some of the toys, and Ryan thought it would be fun to shoot the ice down the slide!  I think the highlight of being outside though was definitely watching the recycle truck dump the cans on the street into the truck!  

This is how we hold the rope as we walk from place to place. Great listening boys!

After coming inside with red noses and very rosy cheeks, we settled down for our reading circle.  Once again, we sang our new snowflake song, which still brought hysterical laughter from both boys!  Our book today was Weather Seasons by Anne Herriges.  This book teaches all about weather, plants, animals, and people in winter.  

After our story we headed to the art table and made snowflakes out of popsicle sticks.  We counted out 3 popsicle sticks and glued them crisscross to make six sides to our snowflakes...because we learned that all snowflakes have six points.  Then we put glue all over them and added beautiful, sparkly sequins and cotton for the snow.  Gluing the sequins onto the snowflakes was not an easy fine motor task, but both Ryan and Ethan persevered to create beautiful snowflakes.    

We then began the fun project of making our own snow out of flour and baby oil.  Ryan and Ethan helped me mix 4 cups of flour and about 1 cup of baby oil into a giant bin.  As you can imagine, the snow we made was quite fragrant!  We talked about how the snow felt, how it smelled, and its color and how our snow did not feel cold or smell like real snow.  Then we pinched and molded the "snow" into snowballs, snowmen, hills, etc.  When we were finished with this sensory project, our room looked like a blizzard had blown through and smelled like a baby! 

So our word of the day was definitely "snowflake" today.  When I introduce new words that have two or more syllables, I always show Ryan and Ethan how to clap the syllables as they say the word.  This practice not only helps them learn how to mark syllables, but also increases their speech intelligibility as they say the multi-syllabic words.  Try this at home when you come across big words that are difficult for your kiddos to say.  

Questions to ask Ryan and Ethan today?

1. What did you do first when you made snow? Poured the flour into the bin

2. What did you do second to make the snow? Poured the baby oil into the bin

3. What did you do last with the snow? Played in it!

4. What did you make at school today? Snowflakes

Looking forward to another great week, as we learn all about winter clothes.  Have a great weekend, and see you all on Tuesday!