In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we are learning all about Puerto Rico! We learned some really neat things like how Puerto Rico got it’s name, what the state bird and flower are, and which famous people were born there. We have a couple of students here at school who are from Puerto Rico and they are taking in the sights on the front and back of the book. Take a look and find out some cool things about Puerto Rico!
Here is a link to the book: Let’s Learn About Puerto Rico.
It is Hispanic Heritage Month and we are learning about Puerto Rico. The sensory groups explored boxes related to facts about the country. The fine motor groups made colorful crafts and the language group hosted a Carnaval de Ponce!
SENSORY GROUP
We put the letters P and R in red, white, and blue rice—–the colors of the Puerto Rican flag.
Science access point: match objects with similar observable properties, such as shape.
There were lots of different things associated with Puerto Rico in this flower filled box including animals and foods grown there. There was a big white star like the one on the flag and the words HOME and FAMILY.
We also put in photos of famous Puerto Ricans and a voice output with a recording of a Ricky Martin song 🙂
Science access point: recognize a model of a real object.
The students stamped stars like the one found on the Puerto Rico flag.
The moon sand we used for this box has such a nice soft texture the students loved!
Math access point: recognize differences in size of objects.
Gold can be found in the rivers of Puerto Rico. The students loved exploring or wearing the shiny gold beads!
So much fun!
They were fascinated by the swirling gold glitter in the discovery bottle.
This box was a hit 🙂
Science access point: track objects in motion.
Puerto Rico is known for beautiful beaches. There were sea shells to find and sand castles to build in our kinetic sand beach.
This is one of our favorite materials ever!!!
Science access point: apply a push to move an object.
Coconuts can be found in Puerto Rico so our oobleck became “coconut milk” this week—-what fun!
Goopy and drippy as usual 🙂
Science access point: recognize that pushing and pulling an object makes it move.
We put a boat and different size fish in our water play since Puerto Rico is an island.
Both the fish squirted water which made them extra fun!
Math access point: recognize similarities and differences in size of objects.
Puerto Rico is known as the Land of Enchantment so we used Bath and Body Works “be enchanted” scent for our bath gel and lotion.
Whether placed on hands, arms, neck, or behind ears it was a hit!
Science access point: recognize one or more external body parts.
FINE MOTOR GROUP
On Tuesday the students made Puerto Rican flags.
First, the students identified the shapes found on the flag—-star, triangle, and rectangle!
Math access point: recognize objects with two-dimensional shapes.
Next, they cut strips of red paper and glued them on to a piece of white paper.
The students used a variety of cutting tools.
Science access point: recognize a change in the appearance of an object.
They were asked to glue their 3 strips to the TOP, BOTTOM, and MIDDLE of their papers.
Math access point: associate quantities with number names.
Then they added a pre-cut triangle and big white star.
Math access point: recognize when an object is added to a situation.
TA DA!!
Let’s visit Puerto Rico!
On Wednesday we made Ponce Carnival masks using this template: Ponce mask
First, the students put glue on their masks using a glue stick.
Math access point: solve problems involving small quantities of objects or actions using language, such as enough, too much, or more.
Then, they chose which color glitter they wanted to use on their mask.
Science access point: identify objects by one observable property, such as color.
We added glitter——and sang our glitter song of course. For those new to us, the glitter song is our take on that old KC and the Sunshine band song. It goes like this: shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake that glitter, shake that glitter! Repeat as many times as needed 🙂
Science access point: recognize the change in the motion of an object.
TA DA!!!
We are ready for the Ponce parade!
LANGUAGE GROUP
There is a week-long celebration in Puerto Rico called the Carnaval de Ponce which is similar to Mardi Gras. There are parades and parties. We decided to have a social get together for the beginning of the year by having a Ponce celebration!
The language group used the masks they made earlier in the week as their costumes for the parade. They also got to wear colorful ponchos and costumes 🙂
Our students paraded through the halls……
……the crowds cheered!
We passed out beads and smiles………
………to the spectators.
After the parade, we all congregated for a “street party” in the hallways. Students got to socialize and listen to authentic Puerto Rican music.
We had so much fun dancing to the music!
Of course, what’s a party without snacks? For our party-goers we had some goldfish (Puerto Rico is an island after all), some coconut Oreos (lots of coconut in Puerto Rico), and some juice. We had sentence strips out so that students could request what they wanted.
What a great party!
It was a great week and we want to give a shout out to our fabulous volunteers who helped make everything possible.
Don’t forget to check your SPAM folder for your confirmation email if you want to follow us and join us again next time for more fun and learning——Group by Group!
This week we are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by looking at different people and things which have been created by people in the Hispanic culture. While reading the book, the question “what should we do?” was asked to the students to which they responded with the voice output device, “celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month”. We had a fun time looking at all of the different colorful pictures, especially the food picture. Ironically, on one of the days of our group, the cafetoria had quesadillas! Muy bien!
Here is a link to the book: Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month
Hola, everyone! This week our Sensory and Fine Motor Groups celebrated hispanic heritage month. Our Language Group looked at words that start with letter E.
Sensory Group—Hispanic Heritage
Cara’s book focused on many aspects of hispanic culture including famous people with hispanic heritage. Our students loved it!
Hispanic culture is so colorful and so was our
first box! We filled it with flowers and paper
streamers just like a fiesta. We also put some
plastic fruit to remind us of Cesar Chavez
who fought for farm workers rights. We
put in Dora the Explorer stickers, magnets
from places with hispanic names, a gavel for
Sonia Sotomayer a supreme court judge, and a voice output device with a snippet of one of Selena Gomez songs. So many cool things to talk about. In addition to the wonderful opportunities to increase language this box addresses the social studies access point of recognizing people from diverse backgrounds make contributions.
Severo Ochoa won the Nobel prize for synthesizing RNA (riboneucleic acid). These springs (found at the junk store) looked similar to its shape.
As these springs move around they are very eye catching and look at this smile—beautiful 🙂
This box addresses the science access point of tracking objects up and down.
Our next box contained cornmeal which reminded
us of yummy foods like tacos and tortilla chips.
This stuff is so much fun to sift and run fingers
through and discover the letter H for hispanic
heritage.
Another nod to hispanic cuisine with our box of dried pinto beans. This box gives our students a wonderful opportunity to practice their scooping skills…..
….and develop tactile discrimination as the
individual beans touch their fingers.
Oscar de la Renta uses fabric to make beautiful clothes. This box had lots of different textures to compare and contrast. Some of our students used them to make their own fashion statements 🙂
We placed pairs of fabrics in the box to address the access point of recognizing objects that are identical to each other.
Some dried lentils in a water bottle made a wonderful
noisy maraca.
Bilateral functions are addressed as
the students move the bottle from hand to hand.
We have found that hot glueing the lid prevents
accidents 🙂
We made some finger paint to honor painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
We used a free coloring page and let our students explore the interesting texture. So much fun to squish around! The difference between the dry paper and the wet finger paint helps our students with the access point related to distinguishing between objects that are wet and objects that are dry.
Then we rinsed our hands in grape scented water—
remembering Delores Huerta who co-founded
the National Farm Workers Association. We
used some inexpensive bubble bath from the
dollar store and it had a really strong scent to
which our students really responded.
We finished with some orange scented lotion and discussed Spain where many hispanic ancestors came from. As we rubbed the lotion on their hands, our students were given the opportunity to indicate a desire for more or no more addressing math access points.
Fine Motor Group—Hispanic Heritage
On Tuesday we practiced hitting the pinata (hanging bolster) in the sensory room—what a great activity for bilateral coordination and crossing midline.
We had so much fun with the maraca in our
sensory group and we had to make more!
We started by picking out ONE egg—
addressing one to one correspondence.
Then we scooped ONE scoop of dried beans into our egg. Holding the egg with one hand and scooping with the other addresses bilateral functions.
What a nice job shown in this picture, although most of our students needed some help….. And in case you are wondering, not all our students stopped at one—a couple dove in with both hands and beans went flying everywhere 🙂
The adults placed masking tape around the egg then
taped on two plastic spoons—which we counted
out, of course!
Next we colored the eggs with markers to make them bright and colorful.
TaDa—these were a HUGE hit. The students loved
shaking them and laughing as we tried singing
La Cucaracha.
We had the best time 🙂
On Thursday we made some ponchos out of grocery bags (we saw this on the Family Fun website). We precut the opening for the head and the slits up the sides and then had our students practice writing their names on the back.
Then we flipped them over and began decorating the ponchos. We used Crayola’s pipsqueak markers which are easy for our little hands to hold.
We used our adaptive scissors to make fringe
Making multiple cuts addresses the math access
point of recognizing the next step in a sequence.
Completely awesome poncho,
don’t you think!
Can our students possibly get any cuter 🙂
Language Group—letter E
We brought back our Edible cornmeal and had fun tracing the letter E.
Then we strung some Enormous beads—-two beads
for Each student!
Next we Explored the contents of this bag…..
…..and Extracted an
Elephant!
Time to decorate an Egg. We used Eggplant colored Elbow macaroni—giving us an Excellent opportunity to work on our pincer grasp.
And here it is …….
an Elegant Egg!
Everybody got an opportunity to play Cara’s sound game….so Exciting!
We finished as usual by looking at some of the wonderful
E words we found today.
Adios for now, join us next week Group by Group!