Germs! Germs! Germs!

Ryan and Ethan thoroughly enjoyed playing with germs!!!! (puff balls) and tissues at the touch and feel pool.  We explained that germs are everywhere and can be many different shapes, sizes, and colors.  We demonstrated that if you don't cover your sneeze or cough, germs (puff balls) will go flying! However, when you cover your sneeze and cough with your "cough catcher" (elbow) or with a tissue, the germs will not spread!

So last week, I posted the song that we sing to learn the "Days of the Week."  This week, I am posting the song that we sing to learn the months of the year during morning circle.  With my own son, I sing these songs whenever...in the bathtub, while we are getting dressed, eating breakfast, in the car on the way to school, etc.  So feel free to practice at home!  I also noticed that Ryan and Ethan know a lot of the words to these songs.  In order to increase speech production, pause during key points of the song and wait to see if your kiddos will fill in the blanks themselves.  You can use this technique during any familiar song.

I got out our Mr. Potato Heads during open center time in an effort to expand Ryan and Ethan's free play beyond the train track.  Both boys enjoyed this activity with our focus being on expanding our sentences and using more requests to meet our specific needs.  For example, I required them to ask for the various potato head pieces using, "I need...." and required that they look at my face while they were talking in order to improve speech intelligibility.  

All of our two-year old friends were outside today, and we were very excited to see them after several weeks of being on different weather-related schedules.  Ryan and Ethan had a blast seeing how many balls they could get to fit in the playhouse.  They also put balls in dump trucks and shopping carts, and pretended to mow the lawn.  They consistently enjoy shopping cart races together and crashing the carts into each other.   

So if you are anything like me...you can't wait until your child stops putting anything and everything in his mouth in hopes that your family will start to ward off some of those dreaded germs!  Unfortunately, I have a thumb sucker and germs are just part of the territory.  Anyway, our goal this week is to try to teach your children about germs, how they are spread, where they live, and the best hand washing techniques in order to flush the germs down the drain!  Our book today was called Germs by Judy Oetting, which is a simple book that teaches children all about germs and the importance of hand-washing.

After we read the book, I explained the importance of covering our coughs and sneezes in order to help stop the spread of germs.  In order to help them understand this, I used a teaching technique suggested on totallytots.blogspot.com.  I took a spray bottle with water and first "sneezed" on Ryan and Ethan and demonstrated how this sneeze can spread germs.  Then I "sneezed" on their hands which made them wet and had them shake my hand which then became wet, demonstrating how they spread their germs to me.  Then I had them "sneeze" into a tissue and shake my hand.  My hand stayed dry, which meant no germs spread! We then talked about the importance of sneezing into your elbow if you don't have a tissue.  This short video helped to summarize all that we had just learned.    

After finishing our "sneezing" exercise, we completed a "Cover Your Cough" art project to further emphasize the importance of not spreading germs.  First, we traced both Ryan and Ethan's hands. Second we glued eyes and hair onto a paper plate. Last, we glued their traced hands with a tissue to cover the nose and mouth.  Super cute!

We concluded our lesson on germs with a trip to the bathroom to change diapers and practice our hand-washing technique.  Feel free to practice the same steps at home too!

Questions to ask this week that were emphasized at school today:

1. Where do germs go when we wash our hands? down the drain!

2. What do we use to cover our mouth when we cough/sneeze? our cough catcher (elbow) or a tissue

3. Show them the above picture as ask what do we do first when we wash our hands? 

    turn the water on and get our hands wet

Just a reminder, no school on Thursday due to parent-teacher conferences.  Looking forward to talking about your sweet boys and all the great progress they have made!