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!
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