Our themes this week were Following the Rules from the Unique Curriculum for our Sensory and Fine motor groups and the letter E for our Alphabet group.

Sensory Group—Following the Rules

We read Goldilocks and the 3 bears asking “did she follow the rules”? We used a communication board to let the students answer yes/no during selected parts of the story where we changed our wording slightly from the original. For example, Goldilocks pushed  her bowl off the table, knocked the chair down, walked in to a stranger’s house, and ran instead of walked, etc. One of our teachers (Alice) came up with this great idea.

We also had some props, including velcro pieces attached to our book pages and 3 bear finger puppets that Nancy made.

 

 

 

 

After our story, we began our sensory play. Students searched for the letters B (bears) and G (Goldilocks) as well as the number 3 in dry oatmeal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We mixed some of the oatmeal with water of a “just right temperature” and tried finger painting the letters G and B and the number 3. Practicing the movement patterns helps build motor memory for the letters and numbers. In addition, it was a different texture for our students who are tactile defensive to explore.

For our students who could tolerate oral tastings we made a separate bowl of oatmeal and encouraged them to communicate by facial expression, vocalization or voice output device if it tasted “just right”. One of our students who rarely verbalizes stated her opinion loud and clear saying “I like it”—-her class got to keep the box of oatmeal 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Yellow easter grass became Goldilocks hair. Our students really loved pulling apart the shredded paper and we helped some of them put it on their heads so they could have “golden” hair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We used some fake fur yardage which we touched and compared its softness to the hard table (comparing properties of materials such as hard/soft is a science access point).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fine Motor Group— Following  The Rules

First, we counted the 3 bear puppets and our students took turns wearing them, working on finger isolation skills. The puppets were a huge hit. After we finished our book we began our Goldilocks art project.

We used yellow ribbon to lace through the precut holes of our paper plate. We pointed out that the plate was a circle. Lacing works on bilateral coordination, eye hand coordination and sequencing skills. In addition, our students practiced their pincer grasps when pulling the ribbon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our students used a communication board to identify facial features that had been precut from magazine adds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We counted 2 eyes, 1 nose and 1 mouth while discussing the the concepts of over/under as our students glued them to the plate.

Doesn’t Goldilocks look beautiful!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, after reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears, we made bear faces from paper plates.

We counted out 2 plates and discussed which one was big and which one was little. Our students used built up handle brushes to paint both plates brown.  Some of our students are very enthusiastic painters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the paint dried, we cut a pink square in half to make 2 triangles for noses using an adaptive scissors. These squeeze scissors are excellent for students with beginning scissor skills. They can be purchased from a variety of catalogs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Finished Product—what a cute little bear!

 WOW! We covered a lot of access points: shapes, colors, fractions, numbers, etc. We Followed The Rules!

The Alphabet Group—letter E

We revved our car Engines (purchased from Meyer Johnson catalog) to Erase an Eight shaped race track. We took it Easy, rather than going fast. Slowly tracing  the line is great visual tracking, the large size it facilitated crossing midline and its vertical placement helps address shoulder stability.

All the students enjoyed the activity and really concentrated on “staying on the road”.

Next we counted out Eight (sneaking in a math access point into our literacy activity) Eggs and used a dinosaur grabber to pick them up and fill the Empty bowl. This activity works on pre scissor skills, eye hand coordination, shoulder stability and graded motor control—and its a lot of fun!

Our students chose Elegant colors to color their 2 paper plates. We noted that all the plates were the same size but we all chose different colors.

Joy drew a line across the plate to let the students practice cutting along a line. Since the paper plates are a heavier cardstock they are actually easier to cut  than lighter weight paper.

We cut 2 brown circles with the hole punch then glued the eyes, the paper plate halves (snuck in another math access point), and the precut trunk (cut from the rim of another plate).

Assembling the Elephant let us work on sequencing, following directions, and spatial concepts.

Our students just loved them and some pretended they were masks!

We finished our session with another fun listening game that Cara made. This is always just so much fun.

And here are some of the words we found today!

Thats all for now, join us again next week for more fun Group by Group!