This week we celebrated Dr. Seuss in our Sensory and Fine Motor Groups. We looked at words that started with letter X in our Language Group.
Sensory Group—Dr. Seuss
We started with Cara’s latest book which was a pretty special one. We got the idea to make our own illustrations from Sharon (one of our followers)—-thanks so much! It was so much fun to see our students faces as they recognized some of the models!
The theme of our first box was “The Cat in the Hat”. It was filled with soft red, white, and black pom poms and chenille stems. We really liked these black and white ones! This was such a fun colorful box that was very eye catching for our students!
We asked our students to find pom poms that were the same, discussing their colors.
The math access points of recognizing a common 3 dimensional object and recognizing two objects that are identical to each other.
We filled our “If I Ran the Zoo” box with straw and a variety of animals you might find at the zoo—including our cool sound producing elephant and tiger found in the dollar section at Target last year. There was also a little duplo zoo keeper, fences, play food for the animals and houses. Our students enjoyed the animals and had a lot of fun waving and shaking the straw.
Pressing the buttons on the sound producing animals was an opportunity to address finger individuation skills as well as addressing the science access point of recognizing and responding to common sounds.
This box also gave the students an opportunity to respond to new vocabulary which is a language access point.
Everybody loves “Green Eggs and Ham” don’t they?! We brought back our green playdough and used our egg shaped cookie cutter to make some of our own green eggs—what could be more fun than that? 🙂
Playdough is such a great tactile medium and great for building fine motor skills as it is squeezed and pressed into shapes.
The science access point of recognizing a change in an object is addressed here. Also, the math access point of recognizing a 2 dimensional shape (oval) is addressed.
Dr. Seuss’s “A B C’s” is another one of our favorite books. Our students sifted through blue and white rice to find letters A B C.
We used our large alphabet cookie cutters and they really stood out in contrast to the rice.
Tactile and visual discrimination skills in addition to letter identification are addressed in this box.
We couldn’t forget “Bartholomew and the Oobleck”! Oobleck—only our most favorite substance EVER! We used neon green food coloring which made the perfect color.
These are such a great pictures, the student really enjoyed having it dripped on his hand—so much so that he used his PIXON communication board to request more.
He effectively communicated his needs using picture symbols which is a language access point—this made Cara VERY happy 🙂
Our Lorax box was filled with pom pom shakers (we got ours from the Oriental Trading catalog)—we thought they looked like truffula trees.
These were totally fun and the students had a blast shaking them—applying a push or pull to move an object is a science access point.
There were a lot of different colors helping address the science access point of identifying objects by one observable property.
“One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” was the theme for our water play. The math access point of associating quantities 1 and 2 with number names in addition to the science access point of identifying objects by one observable property, such as color.
Our little blue fish squirts water when squeezed helping strengthen hands.
We finished with Country Apple scented lotion from Bath and Body works in honor of the book “10 Apples Up On Top”, to help us remember all the fun we had today.
Our students let us know whether they liked our choice by body gestures, vocalizations or in the case of the student pictured—facial expressions.
Guess you can’t please everyone 🙂
Fine Motor Skills—Dr. Seuss
On Tuesday we were lucky enough to have 3 of our “models” while we read our book and our students really enjoyed pointing them out—communicating recognition of familiar persons is a language access point!
For our art project we made Cat in the Hat masks, so much fun! We started by cutting a red rectangle into two pieces—cutting it in half.
Recognizing a change in an object is a science access point. Identifying 2 dimensional shapes, another math access point, is also addressed.
Then we took the 2 red pieces along with a precut white strip and glued them to the top, middle and bottom of a a white rectangle. It was actually 2 pieces of white cardstock stapled together to make it firmer—since we didn’t have any poster board 🙂
Matching 1 object to a designated space to show one-to-one correspondence and associating quantities 1 and 2 with number names are math access points.
These were then stapled to paper plates (circles!) with a smaller circle cut out of the middle. We practiced counting as we passed them out and some of our students are getting REALLY good at it!
TaDa!
How about that—-
a cat in a hat 🙂
On Thursday we continued with our seussical theme by reading Cara’s book again. We also showed the students the book One Fish Two Fish in preparation for our next art project which we found on Pinterest!
We started by painting construction paper fish bowls with a mixture of corn syrup and blue food coloring. This stuff is pretty sticky so paint shirts are a MUST.
Painting gives our students practice using writing tools and while we encourage “proper” grip patterns, it is more important to us that our students are actively INVOLVED in the process.
Then each student added 1 red fish and 1 blue fish precut from construction paper. Since the corn syrup is sticky already—you don’t need glue!
This activity addresses spatial relations and eye hand coordination.
Recognizing when an object is added to a situation is a math access point. Identifying objects by one observable property ( such as color) is a math access point
We finished by glueing our fish bowl to a rectangular piece of paper. One of our students was able to identify the two dimensional shape—-nailing another math access point 🙂
Ta Da!
Doesn’t it look great—you can’t really tell in the picture but the syrup dries shiny so it looks just like water. Totally cool!!!!
Language Group—Letter X
We started by playing Cara’s sound game. There aren’t many words that start with X so she used ones that have X in them—but still working on identifying common sounds.
Then we put siX eXtra-large beads on a string—working on bilateral coordination and counting skills! In addition, indicating the next step in a sequence can be addressed in this activity.
When all the beads were on the string we helped the students count them.
Then we found 2 foXes and 1 oX in a boX!
Our students had so much fun opening up the box and looking inside 🙂
Fine motor skills are addressed as the box is opened and the plush animals are pulled out.
Counting 1-3 objects is a math access point.
Next we glued 2 craft sticks together to make an X. We made it eXtraordinary by sprinkling on some glitter. This activity works on letter identification and prewriting skills in addition to fine motor skills.
The students had fun choosing which color glitter to choose. We gave them 3 choices—to practice for their alternate assessment.
We think they look eXtremely pretty around all the X words we found today!
That wraps up another really fun week, hope you will join us next time….. Group by Group.