We are so excited to be back at school and starting our groups! We have some changes—new students, different classes—-the usual for a new school year but the fun and learning factor remains the same 🙂  To start the new year our theme for our Sensory and Fine Motor Groups was Back to School. The theme for our Language Group is letter A.

Sensory Group—Back to School

We read Cara’s new book using our voice output device for the repetitive line. Responding to a familiar person reading a book aloud is an access point related to print concepts.

Our first box included school related items such as paper shred (we use a lot of paper at school), straws, a little hat (we get new clothes), a school bus, a plastic combination lock, a mini backpack, a play food milk carton, a spoon, a ball and the word “Friends” as well as some little people.

Lots of things to talk about to help vocabulary development!

Pincer grasp skills and visual figure ground skills are addressed while picking up small pieces of paper and straws.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The big yellow school bus is the ultimate  symbol for back to school. This box contains a variety of yellow items to compare and contrast for science access points related to properties of matter.

Items in the box included pom poms, curling ribbon, school bus puzzle pieces, plastic shapes, and easter grass.

We can also count the items addressing math access points.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our school mascot is the owl and this feather boa looks just like owl feathers. So soft to touch and great for calling awareness to various body parts.

Interacting with with the feathers targets the science access point of recognizing and responding to one type of sensory stimuli.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to school also means time for art class with Ms. Judy!

Every year she does some fabulous clay projects with the students. So we made some playdough with sparkly sequins. We used our ABC cookie cutters to go along with our back to school theme. We wanted a darker brown more clay like color for our playdough but as you can see, it didn’t turn out that way—-still lots of fun anyway 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

Music class with Ms Jen and Ms Brenda is always a favorite place and our shakers helped us make some music during group.

Comparing and contrasting the differing sounds of the jingle bells and dried peas addresses science access points related to properties of matter.

In addition, as the bottles are moved they can be visually tracked  which is a science access point related to motion of objects. As our student push or bat at the bottles they are exploring access points related to forces and changes in motion.

 

 

 

 

 

Our rice is in our school colors of yellow and blue. We  tucked in an owl puzzle piece to uncover, as well as the letter S.

Scooping the rice also lets us practicing scooping skills. Our students love the rice box, its always one of their favorite things to explore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And OOBLECK—because back to school means time for Sensory Group again!!! We could write sonnets about this stuff, we just love it 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, we rinsed our hands in apple scented water and rubbed with apple scented lotion—apples for the teacher!

So much fun to be back at school 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fine Motor Group—Back to School

We read Cara’s book and enjoyed seeing students faces light up as they recognized various classrooms.

After we put on paint shirts (working on dressing skills), we passed out rectangular pieces of paper (recognizing 2 dimensional shapes is a math access point) with painters tape initials .  As we passed the papers to the students, we discussed these were the first letters of their name—learning the first letter of your name is an important literacy skill related to the access point of responding to names of familiar persons!

The students chose which color paint they wanted to use.

Using the communication board gives a chance to practice color identification in addition to making choices.

We used foam brushes to paint all over the paper.

 

 

 

Then we pulled the tape off—a great opportunity to practice pincer grasp

skills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ta Da—-look how cool all the letters look!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, after reading our book it was time to get on the bus!.

We started with a strip of yellow paper and asked each student to cut 3 pieces, counting out loud as each piece was cut.  This addresses color identification and math access points. We used our number strip to point to number 3.

Ms.Melissa signs for our student who is hearing impaired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then the pieces were dipped in glue and placed on the bus.

This activity promotes pincer grasp skills and eye hand

coordination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We added 2 black wheels….

circles of course!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the school bus colored we needed to add some riders of course!

We held up staff pictures and asked “who is this?”,  then glued them onto the bus. Repeating this with the student’s pictures.

We finished with a chorus of “The Wheels on the Bus”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Language Group—Letter A

We started by using our Animal tongs to pick up some red Apples (pompoms) to put in Assorted bowls

We also used a number chart to count the Apples, addressing one to one correspondence (math access point).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we Added An Animal to the String.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We made Aliens by using shapes with Angles.  The black lines seen in the picture are the cutting lines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Added googlie eyes

And Antennae.

Note, the fabulous pincer grasp 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They looked

Awesome!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cara’s sound game was lots of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We wrote a lot of sticky notes today—–what a lot of A words we found!!!

Please join us again next week, Group by Group 🙂