Tag Archives: fine motor skills

Feb6

Week 19—Groundhog Day and Letter S

Posted on February 6, 2012 by jd785

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!

Sep4

week 1—Beach, School Tools, and the Letter A

Posted on September 4, 2011 by jd785

week 1—Beach, School Tools, and the Letter A

This week our themes were The Beach for our sensory group, Cool School Tools for our fine motor group and the letter A for our alphabet group.

The Beach

Cara made a super book (she will upload it later in the week) with a repetitive line. We recorded the sounds of waves and seagulls on one sequencer and the repetitive line “at the beach” on the other. Our students were able to add the auditory component by pressing the switch after the page was read. In addition, we passed around the “mer” smell from the Follow your Nose game.

We sprayed water up into the air so it would gently land on the students—-like the ocean spray.

We used coconut scented lotion as our “sunscreen”. We also had goggles and sunglasses for the students to wear.

A hairdryer placed on “cool” setting made a wonderful ocean breeze!

After we finished the story we started our water and fluid play activities.

We made salty sea water.

We used large shells and playdoh stampers in the moonsand.

Students practiced their pincer grasps finding small shells in the play sand.

Cool School Tools

In our Fine Motor Group we talked about Cool School Tools. Cara made another wonderful book (uploaded next week) with a repetitive line. After we finished the book we got to work on our activity. Joy adapted an idea she saw in Family Fun Magazine to make a giant pencil.

First the students cut a small paper plate in half using an adaptive scissors.

Then they picked a marker and colored one half of their halves. We like markers because they have less “drag” than crayons and have vivid colors. They also have nice fat handles which make them easier to grasp.

The adults then folded the plate into a cone shape and taped it closed. We pointed out that it was a CONE shape, which is a math access point.

Precut yellow and pink rectangles were passed to the students. We talked about the shapes, the colors and counted each one as it was passed out.

Students practice writing their names then turn the paper over. The pink rectangle is glued to the bottom of the yellow rectangle. Squeezing glue is great for hand strengthening!

Next we passed a precut blue strip that was then glued on top of the pink rectangle.

We turned our rectangles over and glued them around paper towel rolls.

Smoosh the cone into one end.

The finished product! Some of our students started pretend writing with their pencils—–very cute.

The Letter A

In our last group, our students practice their fine motor skills, literacy and communication skills reinforcing the “letter of the week”.

We used tongs to Add Ants to A bowl. Counting the bowls as we passed them to each student.

Joy has a variety of tongs for the students to choose from. Working with tongs is a great pre-scissor activity.

We keep some post-its and a marker handy to write down any A words. We stick them on the table so the students can see them, point to the words etc. If we use one of the words again, we pull the post-it off and hold it up.

Next we buttoned Apples on the Apple tree.

We then passed out worksheets from Autumn Activities: Apples Apples Everywhere by Peggy Hundley Spitz, OTR and purchased from Therapro.

Students were given a choice of red, yellow or green tissue paper. When taking the Alternate Assessment our students have to pick from 3 choices.

The tissue paper was then torn into smaller pieces and glued onto their apples.

Tearing paper is a great pre-scissor/bilateral coordination activity.

Well that’s it for our first week. We hope you find some useful information and come back next week for more activities Group by Group!