This week our themes were Apples for our sensory and fine motor groups and the letter B for our alphabet group.
Live and learn and BACK UP EVERYTHING!
Sensory Group- Apples
We read Cara’s book Apples Apples for Me. We recorded the sounds of an apple falling from a tree and someone crunching an apple on one of our sequencers. On the other we recorded the repetitive line “Apples, Apples Just for Me”. As we read the story the students were able to participate by activating the switches.
Prior to the session we used templates from Autumn Activities: Apples Apples Everywhere by Peggy Hundley Spitz, OTR and purchased from Therapro to make Apple glasses.
They were pretty goofy and a lot of fun!
We searched for letter A’s hidden in “apple seeds”. Dried black beans are a great stand in for real apple seeds.
The beans have a great tactile feel and searching for the hidden letters addresses object permanence.
Joy made apple scented playdoh. She substituted apple juice for the water called for in the recipe. The scent was a little light but the red food coloring made it very eye catching.
We finger painted letter A’s in applesauce.
We used Country Apple body wash from Bath and Body works to give our water an apple scent and then put in some realistic plastic apples.After drying their hands, we rubbed them with some of the Country Apple lotion so our students could smell yummy all day and help remind them of the lesson.
Our students who are able to tolerate oral tastings got to try some applesauce with caramel syrup—-a mini caramel apple!
Squeezing the syrup and holding the spoon works on bilateral and eye hand coordination. Squeezing also works on hand strengthening.
Fine Motor Group—-Apples
On Tuesday we made apples using a craft idea from Autumn Activities: Apples Apples Everywhere by Peggy Hundley Spitz, OTR and purchased from Therapro.
We used a paper cutter to make strips of red and green paper. Our students really loved using it.
The green strip is folded in half and then stapled to the ends of the red strip . We talked about the shape (circle) that was formed—a math access point.
The students hung their apples on the tree.
Then we all sat down for a crunchy apple snack!
On Thursday, our Fine Motor group continued the apple theme by making great big red apples.
We crumpled scrap paper and stuffed it into a red paper lunch bag (purchased from Target). Crumpling paper is great for working on hand intrinsics.
Of course, we counted the bags as we handed them out.
We wrapped a pipe cleaner “worm” around the top of the bag—great for bilateral coordination.
Then we counted out 2 google eyes and glued them to our worm. During this activity we incorporated lots of access points by having the students work on math by counting apples and google eyes, work on colors: red, green, and yellow, work on shapes: lines and circles and of course following directions. The students really enjoyed this actitity.
The finished product——-Ta Da!
Alphabet Group—letter B
We started with Bowling. Each student pushed their Ball to knock down the Bottles—-then counted how many they knocked down.
A 3 ring binder made a great ramp!
We strung Big Blue Beads. For some of our students aquarium tubing was easier to manipulate.
Students colored Bobby’s Beard Brown….
and then trimmed it, to work on their cutting skills.
Cara recorded some sounds to play “guess the sound” and the students used BoardMaker picture symbols to identify them.
And to end, we reviewed all our Post Its—-we sure found a lot of B words today!
Whew, thats it for week 2. Check back with us next week as we have more fun Group by Group!