We are celebrating Groundhog’s Day! With the book this week, we let the students ask the question “What will the groundhog see?” in anticipation of the groundhog making his appearance February 2. After reading the book, we asked the students if they thought the groundhog would or would not see his shadow. Enjoy!
This week our theme was Groundhog Day for our Sensory and Fine Motor groups. Letter S was the theme for our Language group.
Sensory Group—Groundhog Day 
We read Cara’s book “What will the Groundhog See?” The voice output device was used to ask that question on each page. We then let our students vote (by using eye gaze, gestures, or vocalizations) on whether they thought the groundhog would say “spring” or “6 more weeks of winter”. We counted the votes and discussed which side got the most votes, addressing math access points.
Later in the week, our student who picked “6 more weeks of winter” was quite pleased with himself upon finding he and the famous Phil made the same prediction.
Then we turned the lights off and took turns making
shadows (using a flashlight and a storage box lid as the background). Our students enjoyed looking at their shadows as well as watching the light move around, addressing visual tracking.
We placed the letter G and the number 2 in some “dirt” (made from coffee grounds). Groundhogs live in burrows that they dig and Groundhog Day is on February 2.
Some of our students responded very positively to the coffee aroma indicated by their turning towards it and smiling. Others enjoyed sifting or scooping through the grounds.
What a fun way to address emergent literacy skills!
One of the themes of Groundhog Day is opposites, so our next
sensory box was filled with black and white items, reminding us of light and shadows.
We filled it with black and white pom poms, chenille stems, beads, and yarn, black felt, white sheepskin, a white dusting glove, a black ball and a black film container. We had lots of opportunities for exploring the properties of materials a science access point.
Its always fun seeing what gets pulled out 🙂
We continued our opposites theme with our next box which contained white rice and black beans—more scooping and sifting fun! Touching and exploring the rice and beans also builds tactile awareness.
When the groundhog comes out of his burrow, he predicts either a coming spring or more winter. So our next box contained items related to both seasons. We put in some flower blossoms, leaves and sun glasses for springtime fun. Snowflakes, snowmen and wooly scarves to remind us of winter.
This box gave our students opportunities to practice grasping skills in addition to comparing the properties of objects and seasons.
The sunglasses were fun addition and our teachers got some cute pictures of students wearing their “cool” shades.
And the ultimate opposite—oobleck!!!! Its a liquid! Its a solid! Just so wonderful for tactile explorations, in addition to practicing finger movements and prewriting patterns.
Then we rinsed our hands in Old Spice Denali scented water. It had that woodsy scent that reminded us of the burrows where groundhogs might live. We kept the water cool, just like the great outdoors!
This student is practicing his scooping skills which help with his self feeding program and eye hand coordination.
We finished with a soft cuddly length of brown fake fur. A lovely little reminder of that cute little groundhog 🙂 We discussed its properties—brown and soft— building language skills related to science access points. In addition, running fingers across its surface increases tactile awareness.
Fine Motor Group—Groundhog Day
On Tuesday we read Cara’s book again and took turns wearing a top hat (like the groundhogs helpers) and petting our plushy groundhog.
Ms. Katie can totally rock a top hat!
Then we counted out 1 green paper rectangle for each student.
They used the adaptive tabletop scissors to snip across one side of the paper. Its fun to watch our students get more and more independent!
Then we put glue on the paper. And rolled it around a paper cup.
This activity addresses bilateral coordination, hand strengthening, and graded motor control.
We also glued a clip art groundhog to a tongue depressor
and inserted it into a slit in the bottom of the cup. Moving the tongue depressor lets the groundhog pop in and out of his burrow. Manipulating the stick helps address arm movements, graded motor control and directional concepts.
Hmm—–what will the groundhog see?
On Thursday we read about the groundhog again and had more fun playing with shadows. Then we made our own groundhog from an idea we found on the Family Fun website.
First we counted out 8 green groundhog poster board cutouts and 8 black construction paper shadow silhouettes.
We put glue onto the green cutout and put the
black shadow on top—then pat pat pat! Squeezing the glue builds hand strength and patting the paper down provides lots of tactile input to the palmer surface.
We flipped it to the other side…..
AND…..discovered a groundhog picture pre-glued to the other side! We printed this out from the Family Fun website. Picking up the paper to turn it over helps work on grasp skills, forearm rotation in addition to spatial concepts and following directions.
We painted the groundhog brown. Some of our students are starting to show such nice progress in their ability to hold and manipulate their paint brushes—we are so excited by their progress!
And here he is—
looks like this little groundhog is predicting an early spring 🙂
Language Group—Letter S
First our Students chose which color play dough they wanted. We gave them a choice of 3, which is the same as the Alternate Assessment format.
Opening up the containers helps address bilateral hand Skills and hand intrinsic functions. Then we rolled the play dough into Snakes addressing graded motor control.
Then we picked Some Snacks to String!
We just love this set of beads, So much fun! We purchased it from Learning Resources.
For our students who had difficulty with manipulating the string, we used aquarium tubing.
Next, we made Some Spiders, Starting by
Slicing 8 black paper legs. We used our paper cutters to cut nice Straight lines.
Then we Stuck the legs onto the back of a black paper plate (picked up at an after Halloween sale). We counted 4 for each side, addressing spatial relations concepts. We used glue to attach the legs and then used tape to make Sure they were Secure. Of course, its so much fun to use tape:)
Then we flipped the plate over and attached some googlie eyes! We had our students count out 2 eyes to work on one to one correspondence.
Look at this Super Scary Spider—-don’t Scream!!!!
We finished with Cara’s Sound game,
And picking out our favorite S words—-there were a lot to choose
from this week!
Please join us next week, we have lots of fun planned Group by Group!
We are celebrating the Chinese New Year this week. The book goes over some facts about what goes on during the Chinese New Year. The question for the repetitive line was “What are we celebrating?” Enjoy!
This week our theme was Chinese New Year for our Fine Motor and Sensory Groups. Our Language Group looked at words starting with the letter R.
Sensory Group—Chinese New Year
We started by reading Cara’s latest book “Its the Chinese New Year” with its really colorful pictures. Our students are getting very good at reaching for and activating the voice output device for the repetitive line.
Our first sensory box was filled with red paper shred (we just ran some red paper through the shredder). Its a Chinese custom to give monetary gifts in red paper envelopes. We added some of the animals from the Chinese zodiac to the box, including a dog, monkey, snake, pig and a DRAGON! We added a little plastic moon, since the calendar is based on the lunar cycle. We also included some red and gold mardi gras beads, red pom poms, and a play food lettuce leaf (lettuce wraps are frequently served at new year parties).
This box was so much fun and our students loved the grabbing and shaking the paper shred.
Tea is very popular in China, so our next box was
filled with the aromatic leaves. We buried 2 red circular puzzle pieces (shape identification a math access point) in the box.
Red is considered a lucky color in Chinese culture.
We also put a little spoon in the back to allow our students the opportunity to practice their scooping skills.
Fireworks are also a big part of the Chinese New Year celebration. We brought them into our classroom in two ways. First we used our toys with flashing lights, which are very visually appealing to our students. We turned off the over head lights to enhance the effect.
We also included the sound of fireworks by laying
bubble wrap on the floor. When the wheelchairs were rolled over the bubble wrap it sounded just like fire crackers—way cool!
One of our students, who has just learned to self propel, kept rolling herself back and forth across the wrap. The smile on her face was priceless.
Of course, our ambulatory students also got the opportunity to walk and jump on the wrap. We found that the wrap with the bigger bubbles was easier for them to pop.
And yes, the adults joined in—-we couldn’t help ourselves 🙂
Our next box was filled with white rice, which is often eaten during Chinese meals. We hid the letter C—for China, of course!
Rice is always so much fun to sift through and scoop. Our students love it.
We made a goo bag by mixing red food coloring and
hand sanitizer in a zip lock freezer bag. It turned into this beautiful, almost iridescent color. We double bagged it (making sure to place the bag openings at opposite ends)—if quick little hands can open one end we are quick enough to stop them before they get to the other!
Our students were able to practice their pre- writing patterns, letters or a Chinese character, using their fingers (also giving them opportunities to practice finger individuation).
We finished up with our water and lotion play. This week we used the White Tea and Ginger scent from Bath and Body Works.
As usual, our students really enjoyed playing with the water, which is wonderful for tactile awareness as well as calming for some of our students. They are all starting to anticipate the hand lotion experience and it is so cute to see those little hands reaching out for their turn. For the ones that can apply it themselves, they are getting the opportunity to practice bilateral hand skills and crossing midline. For our students who do a lot of hand mouthing we apply the lotion on their upper arms or on the back of their necks.
Fine Motor Group—Chinese New Year
We read Cara’s awesome book and took turns stomping or rolling over some bubble wrap when we got to the page about the fireworks. Then we proceeded to make a chinese dragon mask (thanks to Martha the OT intern for coming up with this idea).
We pre cut the masks and taped on some dragon teeth. Then our students tore and crumpled tissue paper to glue onto the mask. This is a great way to recycle all that tissue paper that you get with presents! Of course, we talked about all the different colors and gave our students opportunities to practice choice making.
Tearing and crumpling the tissue paper is good for bilateral and hand intrinsic functions.
Dipping the tissue paper into the glue (a recycled lid makes a great dipping bowl) is great for promoting pincer grasp skills and placing the tissue on the plate addresses eye hand coordination.
Next, we counted out 1 piece of white paper for each student.
Then we counted out 2 black circles for each of them (addressing math access points, of course).
We put 2 dots of glue and placed the circles on top.
Then we glued the “nose” onto the plate.
We stapled some paper streamers to the side and our absolutely fabulous chinese dragon mask was finished.
This deserved a big Ta-Da, don’t you think!
Our vision teacher placed one on the light box for her student and it looked so awesome we had to include it.
On Thursday, we continued our celebration of Chinese New Year by reading “Its the Chinese New Year” again and then making a dragon puppet.
First, we found a chinese dragon picture on google images and enlarged it. The images were glued on to poster board (we found that using a glued stick works best) and had Jeannie’s practicum students cut them out.
Then our students used markers to color them. We like using
markers because of their low friction component and intense colors. This makes it easier (as opposed to crayons or pencils) for our students to make marks.
Joy the OT just has to comment on this lovely little functional grasp of the marker 🙂
Because our students had differing abilities for holding writing utensils, we made sure to put out a variety of shapes and sizes, all of which were picked up at places like Walmart or Target.
We particularly like this little tripod marker that works perfectly for this student.
After coloring, we added some glitter, sequins and a great
big googlie eye! This addresses eye hand coordination as well as grasp and release patterns.
Of course, we never pass up an opportunity to add glitter and googlie eyes 🙂
The adults then hot glued a head and 2 tongue depressors to a 12 inch length of christmas garland (picked up on clearance at Target).
And here they are—-some pretty spectacular chinese dragon puppets!
Happy New Year!!!!!
Language Group—Letter R
First, we Raced on the Round Red Road.
The students used a car shaped eraser (too cute) on the dry erase board. We drew a large circle to encourage crossing midline and placing it on a vertical surface promotes shoulder stability.
Then we used Red tongs to pick up some Red Radishes.
Tong activities are great for hand strengthening, eye hand coordination, and developing the graded motor control needed for scissor skills.
Our students with physical challenges helped the Rabbit eat the Radishes.
We hot glued a shower curtain ring to the back of the toy and some hook velcro to its mouth. When the velcro comes into contact with the pompoms, they stick pretty well.
We counted how many Radishes each student gave the Rabbit to eat, addressing math access points. Discussing the spherical shape of the pompom also addresses math access points.
Then we painted some Rad Robots! We picked from
the Rainbow of colors at the bottom of each page. This booklet was picked up at the dollar section at Michaels—we love the dollar section 🙂
Some of our students used standard water color brushes but others needed ones with larger handles. We were so proud of this student for really staying on task—nice job!
We counted how many Robots were on each students page and named the colors as the students chose them.
We found putting just a little water in a plate helps cut down on spillage and water logged papers.
We finished by playing another of Cara’s sound game. It was Really fun.
And , of course, looking at some of the R words we
found today—there were quite a few!
What a great week, we had so much fun! Please come back next week for more fun Group by Group!
This week, we actually used a song that was found on the website about.com. Cara put pictures to the words. We pre-recorded a voice output sequencer so each child could “sing” a line of the song. This song is sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”.
This week the theme for our Sensory and Fine Motor Groups was Martin Luther King. The theme for our Language Group was the Letter Q.
Sensory Group—Martin Luther King
Cara turned a song found on the internet into our book this week. Instead of reading our book, our students took turns “singing” a line from the book using a sequencer device. Thanks to our OT intern, Martha, for coming up with the idea and finding the song.
Our first sensory box contained a variety of items representing Dr. King. Since he was born in Georgia we included some velveteen fabric that felt like a peach (a symbol of Georgia), and some peach colored paper twist and yarn. Digging deeper, our students found a school bus, a dove, a peace symbol and some little people. We also included some rainbow colored items (yarn, chenille stems, easter basket stuffing) and the word FRIENDS—Dr. King wanted us all to be friends!
Our next box contained pom poms of varying 
colors and sizes. Different colors and different sizes but they are all the same on the inside—just like us!
Math access points were explored when comparing large and small and counting pom poms of the same color. Rainbows are symbols of diversity and Dr. King wanted us all to remember how beautiful that was.
We mixed red and yellow food coloring
to make some peach colored oobleck. Mixing two colors to make a third let us explore color concepts related to science access points.
We continued the peach theme by having our students practice their prewriting patterns in peach scented shaving cream (thank you Barbara). It really had a terrific peachy aroma.
We rinsed our hands in birthday cake scented
water (reminding us we were celebrating Dr. Kings birthday) and rubbed on some delicious peach scented lotion.
Wikki Stix are waxed strings that are a perfect stand in for candles and our students really enjoy bending and twisting them around. Handling the little strings gives them opportunities to practice their pincer grasp skills. We continued our rainbow theme by using lots of colors.
We placed Dr. King’s initials in our rainbow
rice. Searching for the letters addresses tactile and visual skills. Its also fun to scoop and sift through the colorful grains of rice.
Fine Motor Group—Martin Luther King
On Tuesday we used our sequencer to “sing” about Dr. King and then we made freedom bells. We got the idea for the bells at the Twiggle Magazine website.
We started by attaching a medium size jingle bell to a pipe cleaner, threading it through a hole in a paper cup, and then securing it. Stringing activities are excellent for promoting pincer grasp and eye hand coordination skills. We also discussed the different colored pipe cleaners and counted the cups as we passed them out.
Then the students used a circle punch to 
cut out their faces from a picture. Operating the punch helps promote hand strengthening skills.
They glued the picture and a strip of paper with the phrase “let freedom ring” to the cup. We used our food dye colored glue to attach the pieces to the cup. We love the way the color helps our students see where they have placed the glue. Squeezing the glue helps with hand strengthening and attaching the pieces helps promote pincer grasp skills and eye hand coordination.
Here is our bell, pretty cool don’t you think!
One of our students with a visual impairment LOVED his bell and kept ringing it the rest of the afternoon.
Let Freedom Ring!!!
On Thursday we sang our song again and made a rainbow peace and friendship wreath.
We started with a rectangle poster board with a circle lightly drawn on it. Discussing the shapes addresses math access points.
Next, our students chose a color from a
selection of three.
Our state alternate assessment testing has begun and we want to make sure that our students have lots of practice making choices from an array of three.
We then painted their hands. The touch of the brush and paint on the palmer surface increases tactile awareness.
We have found that it is important to have paper towels and a bowl of soapy water close at hand.
We have also found that it is important to keep a FIRM hold on the bowl of water 🙂
Our students stamped their hands along the circle. Most of them needed a little help but some were able to do this independently.
With the addition of some paper doves from the dollar store, here is our peace and friendship wreath.
Just beautiful.
Language Group—Letter Q
We began by saying “I have a Question, who would like a turn?” This gave our students the opportunity to communicate by raising their hands, vocalizing, or body movements and take turns Quickly pulling and pushing the Quazar (a geo ball) in and out to make it Quiver!
The design of the ball made it easy for all our students to grasp including those with physical impairments. When grasped with both hands, bilateral coordination is addressed.
Then the students took turns twirling a noise
maker but they had to stop each time Ms. Joy held up the Quiet symbol.
Our students LOVED this game and had so much fun! It really was Quite the hit 🙂
Motor control, listening skills and visual attention are addressed with this activity.
Next we cut paint samples into pieces. Taking our time and not working too Quickly.
Paint samples are great for practicing cutting skills. They have built in cutting lines and come in different sizes. The heavier weight card stock also makes it easier for beginning cutters.
Some of our students used regular scissors,others used adaptive ones including squeeze scissors or tabletop versions.
They glued the pieces onto the paper to make a
Quilt for a Queen—its really Quite the thing 🙂
Squeezing the glue helps with hand strengthening and placing the pieces addresses spatial relationships.
We finished with another awesome sound game. Cara did a great job finding “Q” sounds, it wasn’t that easy this week!
We don’t have a lot of post-its this week but
we still had fun using them throughout the session.
Please join us again next week for more fun Group by Group!
We talked all about winter this week. The book goes over some of the things we see and wear during winter. Each of the first lines of the pages end with the word “because” before the repetitive line. If the students did not automatically press the voice output device, we would ask the question “why?” in order for them to answer “winter is here”.
This week the theme for our Fine Motor and Sensory Groups was Winter. The Letter P was the theme for our Language Group.
Sensory Group—Winter
Cara wrote another great book, all about winter. After reading the book we made snow! We purchased some fake snow powder, added water——–and, ta da, lots of white fluffy snow flakes.
Our students really enjoyed watching the powder expand into flakes as we explored science access points. It had a very snow like texture and we used cold water to heighten the effect.
We explored a variety of winter objects in our next
box: large and small snowflakes (some hard and some soft), rough and smooth snowmen, arctic animals including a soft seal,hard penguins and some felt arctic hares, dolls hat and scarf, white pom pom snow balls, and a building block icicle.
Comparing and contrasting the different properties of materials is one of our science access points and this is such a fun way to do it!
We brought out our fluffy pom pom yarn which reminded us of the wooly blankets and sweaters that keep us toasty and warm on cold winter days.
Next, we searched for the letter W in powdered snow
(a mixture of white cornmeal, flour and cornstarch). There was 1 big W and 2 small ones—working in some math access points of course! Our students had fun scooping the powder, burying their hands in it, or squeezing it together (working on palmer arches) to form little snowballs. Needless to say, we all ended up leaving with a little dusting of snow—but the fun factor more than made up for the mess 🙂
Using our cookie cutters we cut out snow balls and snow flakes out of our snow-dough. We found the recipe online and rather than flour, it is made from cornstarch. It has an interesting rubbery texture that is excellent for cutting or forming into snowballs.
We also worked on prewriting patterns or making
little snow sculptures in shaving cream. We rinsed our hands in peppermint scented water and rubbed peppermint scented lotion on our hands and arms.
Having our students rub the lotion on themselves helps build body awareness and bilateral coordination. It also helps build a nice olfactory memory of all the fun we had today!
Fine Motor Group—Winter
On Tuesday, we read Cara’s book and were very excited when one of our new students independently activated the voice output device during the story.
After our story we made eskimo hats. We got the idea from the Winter Activities book by Peggy Hundley Spitz, OTR and purchased from Therapro. We started with a grocery bag with a precut circle. We drew a line around the opening to help further define it for our students.
Our students practiced writing their
names on the back of their bag, turned it over and then glued cotton balls onto the circle.
This activity addresses eye hand coordination and works on developing pincer grasp skills.
Then we threaded some yarn through slits in the front of the bag, another great pincer grasp activity. Its also good for visual tracking.
Isn’t this a picture of a perfect pincer!
We tied a bow and rolled up the bottom and our
hat was done. Just fabulous!
Our students had so much fun trying on their hats, Ms Cara just had to join in 🙂
On Thursday, we continued our winter theme by making polar bear handprints.We started by discussing the color (blue) of our paper and its rectangular shape. We counted the papers as we passed them out and again, our students practiced writing their names.
Then we helped them paint their hands and make a handprint on the paper.
We made sure to put a thick coat of paint on the hands and fingers!
After a quick hand wash, our students used 
paintbrushes to add some snow to their picture.
This student is showing some really nice emerging tool use and we are so proud of him.
We then sprinkled on some sparkly snowflakes. Holding and shaking the container helps address shoulder stability and graded motor control in addition to eye hand coordination.
With the addition of a couple of facial features
using a black marker, our polar bear came
alive.
Just so super cute 🙂
Language Group—Letter P
We started by using our tongs to Pick up Purple and Pink Pom Pom’s. We then counted how many each student Put into their bowls.
Using tongs helps to improve hand intrinsic functions and eye hand coordination.
Next we Picked a Pet and Put the Piece into the
Puzzle. Our students really enjoyed this activity and were quite excited about their choices.
Picking up the pieces, which have little knobs, helps to promote a pincer grasp. Placing the pieces addresses eye hand coordination and spatial concepts.
Then we Painted a Pig (drawn by Joy) Pink and Purple. Our large simple figure helps our students learn to keep their strokes in a defined area.
And here it is—–a Positively Perfect Pink and
Purple Pig!
We finished by playing Cara’s sound game, and looking at all the P words we found.
Please join us again next week, we are going to have so much fun Group by Group!
The book for this week went over different things that are seen during Christmas. As with the other books for the past 2 weeks, we asked our students “what do we say?” to which the voice output was preprogrammed to respond “Merry Christmas!” With our verbal students, we had them use the voice output device as well as imitate the response verbally.
Christmas was the theme for our Sensory and Fine Motor groups. Our Language group’s theme was the letter O.
Sensory Group—Christmas
We finished our holiday unit by learning about Christmas this week starting with Cara’s book. We have our props and sensory boxes ready, so let the merry making begin 🙂
We let our students wear finger puppets while we read our book.Finger puppets are so fun and great for working on finger individuation. For other students, they are helpful for calling attention to and increasing visual regard for their hands.
After finishing the story, we turned off the
lights so we could turn on our battery operated ones! Our students were entranced and loved looking (addressing visual functions) and touching them.
In addition, they were able to strengthen finger intrinsic skills turning them on/off.
We found these lights at Target.
When we finally turned the lights back on we opened our first sensory box in which we placed a variety of items related to our theme. We had large jingle bells, some green garland, fat chenille stems, pompoms, mardi gras beads, and yarn in the colors of red and green. We also put in a little doll Christmas sweater, snowman ornament, felt Santa and Christmas cut outs, a tiny stocking, package bows and some assorted theme related toys.
Whew! What a lot to explore and discuss the different properties of!
We cut our candy cane, reindeer and star 
(all symbols of Christmas) shapes in our gingerbread scented playdough. Some of our students needed reminders that the playdough was “not to eat”. We generally know which of them have a tendency to want to sample things and so make sure to redirect them when needed.
Playdough is great for working on hand strengthening when squishing and squeezing. When pinching small pieces or rolling between fingers, you address finger individuation skills.
Garland is everywhere at Christmas, so we had to have some to explore! Its soft, shiny and easy to grasp. Its also visually very appealing to our students.
They had so much fun holding and shaking it, or—
having it draped around them 🙂
We looked for the letter C hidden among
the red and green beans (Christmas
colors). Also an opportunity to practice
scooping and pouring skills.
We practiced pre writing patterns in oobleck, which we scented with peppermint extract to remind us of candy canes.
Peppermint aroma has been associated with increased attention and alertness
We also added some red and green glitter for visual interest and to encourage tracking.
We finished by rinsing our hands in gingerbread scented warm water and rubbed on some of the lotion to help us think about Christmas the rest of the day 🙂
Fine Motor Group—Christmas
On Tuesday we began by reading Cara’s “Merry Christmas” book and had lots of fun with the finger puppets. Then we made a reindeer!
We started by passing (counting as we did so, of course) out one large floor puzzle piece for each student and painting it brown.
Painting is a fun way to gain practice grasping and using writing utensils.
On an additional note, putting paint shirts on and off helps work on dressing skills—got to fit those ADL’s in where we can!
Then we passed out 2 slightly smaller floor
puzzlepieces to each student. This time we
counted by 2’s as we passed them out—
math access points!
These pieces were painted black.
We then glued the antlers to the head, added 2 googlie eyes and 1 red pom pom nose—working on math access points and pincer grasp skills!
And here he is—-Rudolph the red
nosed reindeer!
On Thursday after reading Cara’s book again, we made some snowflake ornaments. Thanks to Alice W. for this great idea!
We started with a snowflake made from puzzle pieces that had been pre-glued together. These were regular size puzzle pieces.
The reason for our puzzle mania this week? Well, they were FREE —-and we LOVE free!
We painted them with a mixture of white
paint and a little glue.
Then we sprinkled them with fake snow while the paint was still wet. Jeannie put the snow it a sugar shaker to make it easier for our students.
You could put the snow in a bowl and have your students pick it up and sprinkle using their fingers to work on translation movements.
Look at this lovely little flurry of snowflakes!
Just so sparkly and pretty. They are going to look lovely hanging on a tree or window.
The Language Group—Letter O
First we took Orange beads Out Of the bowl and strung them Onto Orange string!
This activity addresses bilateral coordination and pincer grasp skills.
Our students with more significant 
physical differences used plastic tubing and larger beads.
Next we pulled apart Our stretchy tubes and joined the ends to make an O.
The tubes help work on upper extremity strengthening (pulling apart) and eye hand coordination (joining the ends).
Then we took a paper plate (from which
Joy had precut a little section) and began making an Owl.
Our students chose which color markers they wanted to use—-they didn’t have to choose Orange 🙂
After they had finished coloring the plate they cut the Orange wings. Some of our students practiced cutting straight lines with the adaptive tabletop scissors.
Other students practiced cutting curved lines with
either an adaptive or regular scissors.
The wings were then glued On to the plate. Then we added 2 eyes and 1 beak (math access points) and made sure to put them in the right Order—the beak goes under the eyes (directionality concepts).
We taped a loop of Orange yarn to the back.
Ta Da—Our Orange winged Owl
Ornament!
We finished the session with Cara’s sound game and looking at all the O words we found this week—Oh so much fun.
Wow, what a week! Well its about time for Winter Break so we will not be doing any more groups until the new year. We have some great stuff planned so please join us again in 2012 for more fun Group by Group.