Curriculum and Homework--Spring

*Please note that language activities are differentiated to meet each student at his/her current level of linguistic performance and to focus on each student's individual IEP goals. Therefore, I am constantly engaging the students in a wide variety of activities throughout the week. The activities listed below reflect a general theme of each week--an activity that I modify multiple ways to meet multiple levels of skill and objectives. Whenever possible, I have tried to include some variations in each activity to give parents a better idea of what their individual child might have been expected to do within each activity. If the activities described below do not seem to be a reflection of your child's abilities and/or goals, please feel free to contact me with questions. I'd be happy to describe the specifics of a given activity as it relates to your own child.

Spring Has Sprung!! (well, according to the calendar, if not according to the weather report!)

This week we ushered in Spring by playing a Flower Garden game. The students took turns picking "flowers" (construction paper flowers on green popsicle sticks) from the "garden" (green bristle blocks that look a bit like grass). Each flower contained a picture. Depending on their level of language development, students were asked to either: label the picture and/or to answer a question about the picture. Questions were related to Springtime objects and events. (e.g., "What are some things you can do at the park?" "What animals live on a farm?"). Families could try practicing similar questions at home (great for car rides or the dinner table)! Helping students name several items that fit within various Springtime categories would also be a perfect family activity. Take turns asking your child to name as many bugs, flowers, farm animals, sports, etc. as they can think of, and teach them new ones that you know!  Click here for a list of Springtime Questions of varied difficulty level for you to practice with your child at home. 

 

This week we read There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Chick. We practiced Easter and Springtime vocabulary such as basket, straw, and chick. In addition to vocabulary, the students continue to use this series of silly stories to gain skills in the areas of story sequencing and re-telling, as well as making predictions. Click here for pictures to print out and use to help your child re-tell this story.

 

This week we had a lot of fun opening plastic eggs and finding little objects inside. Depending on their language level, students may have been expected to open their eggs and verbally label (or use the iPad to identify) the objects inside. Students with higher level language skills played the game a little differently. Those students took turns opening their egg in secret and describing their object so their partners could guess what was inside. It was hard work keeping the object name a secret and giving "clues" instead. The students practiced using descriptive language such as color and size words. In addition, they used the various functions of the objects to help their friends guess what they were hiding. This would be an excellent type of game to play at home (with or without the eggs). You may want to watch this quick video with your child to give them a demonstration of how we play the egg guessing game (remind your child to notice that the student doesn't say the name of the item inside the egg, but instead provides a description so his partner can guess.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSVF0HIlR_o&feature=em-upload_owner

The Old Lady was back this week in the story There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Frog. The students took turns feeding the old lady Spring themed vocabulary items and assembling a garden at the end of the story.  They practiced words such as "seeds," "gloves," "dirt," and "rake." Try talking to your children about gardens as you're out and about in your neighborhood. What kinds of things might you see in a garden? What do plants need to help them grow? etc. Click here for pictures to support your child's ability to re-tell the story.

This week the students worked on their speaking and listening skills by creating a garden scene. Students with early language skills practiced receptive identification of garden-themed vocabulary such as "bird," "broccoli," "butterfly," and "worm." Students with higher-level language skills practiced following directions with color, shape, size, and location concepts such as "Put the little bird next to the carrot."  Students took turns giving and following such directions to/from their peers, as well. Families could create a similar game at home using brown construction paper for the "dirt" and pictures of fruits, vegetables, and animals from magazines and/or supermarket circulars or print these pictures to use for the garden items. 

This week students used pictures of bugs to practice their descriptive language skills as well as their ability to follow directions containing multiple features. Early language uses were asked to simply identify bugs of different colors. Students with more advanced language skills were asked to differentiate between bugs that differed from each other based upon color, number of legs, and number of spots. Students took turns being the "teller" and describing their bug while the other students acted as "listeners" and had to determine whether they were holding the matching bug.  Families could create a similar activity to play at home by simply drawing matching sets of bugs with a circle for a body and various numbers of legs and spots. Click here for a video of what kinds of language the students were expected to use when playing this game. 

As the preschool classes continued to talk about all things Spring related, we played lots of games that allowed us to focus on the students' language goals while reinforcing Springtime vocabulary. This week we played the game Snail's Pace Race. The students took turns rolling the dice to determine which color snail to move across the game board. Before they were allowed to move the snail, each student had to answer a WH question on a question card that matched the color they had rolled (or, for students who are not yet working on answering questions, their job was to follow a one or two step direction on described on a card that matched the color they had rolled). The students had a blast anticipating which snail would cross the finish line first!

 Similar to the activity described above, we also played more Springtime games such as Lucky Ducks and Fishin' Around as the beautiful spring weather finally arrived. Once again, the students had to "earn" their ducks and fish by answering a question or following a direction that matched the color of their fish or the colored dot on the bottom of their duck. All of this practice answering questions and following directions is really paying off as the students are all becoming more accurate and more independent with their responses every day!

We went to the beach with our good friend the Old Lady in the story There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Shell. This time the hungry gal swallowed all sorts of beach-themed vocabulary. The students enjoyed feeding the Old Lady puppet items such as sand, a crab, and a seagull. This story generated quite a bit of conversation as the students enjoyed sharing their own personal experiences of going to the beach and talking about all the interesting things you can find at the beach. Click here for pictures to help your child retell the story. 

The last few weeks of school included all sorts of celebrations, theme days, and special events. Many of the preschool classrooms planned activities around the following themes: camping, beach, safari, pizza, the movie Frozen, among others. Classrooms were decorated accordingly and students wore clothing and ate food related to the above themes. I had so much fun planning my speech therapy activities to coincide with the various themes. Several of our games involved having the students give and follow directions to/from a peer to create picture scenes (a camping scene using magnets, a beach scene using stickers, etc.). Another favorite following directions game involved placing Anna and Elsa and co. in different locations in and around a Frozen castle (in, on, under, next to, in front of, behind, etc).

It's hard to believe that Summer is here! It has been an awesome year at LMPA. I will miss all of my students over the summer and I hope my wonderful Willett families will work together with their children to practice all of the awesome speech skills the little ones have gained this year. Try out some of the activities described in the Home Carryover pages for some speech-y summer fun!