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!