October's Sensory Box

This month I threw in some beans as a base, little pumpkins, puff balls, cups, unifix cubes, flowers and some leaves. For the first time in 2 years, Jake showed no interest in the Sensory Box. He didn't want to play in there even when I sat and explored. I think he has out grown the box or at the very least needs a break from it.

But the good news is Joey has stepped right in! He really enjoyed the box for the first time. He has just turned 1 year old so he is just the age when I started Structured Play for Jake. Jake and Joey are completely different kids and it is fun to see! Jake never made a total mess out of the box but let me tell you Joey had a great time throwing those beans as far as he could. Ugh, it was a total mess. BUT, it is part of the learning process. I cannot take away the box and say, "nope you aren't ready!" Instead I need to teach him how to use the box.

He did take some time to explore in a more delicate way. He picked up some items and looked them over. He thought the pumpkins were balls and enjoyed throwing them. Funny thing was, Jake (when he was 1) thought they were for eating and his little teeth marks are still in them. It is a picture of their differences right there!

Comments

Name Writing Practice

Jacob did a little name writing practice today. He was asked to trace the dotted lines to write letters for his name. This is good practice with spelling as well. I had him say each letter as he wrote the letter. As you can see he is very choppy and not exactly on the dotted lines. His motor skills are not quite sharp enough yet to be able to hold the crayon and he especially loses control as he works on towards the end. We also did a Missing Letter Name Practice. Both of these ideas came from Cherrios and Lattes ' Play to Write, Write to Read. These are good ways to practice names and writing. He gets very angry if he thinks he made a mistake. See the scribbling. I have to reinforce that it is ok to make a mistake and that everyone makes mistakes but we just keep trying. Practice is the only way to get better. When this happens I cannot help but think of my former students that did the very same thing and proceeded to throw fits and give up. I hope to help Jacob ge...

Play to Write- Week 3

We participating in a Wednesday Play Group called Play to Write over at Cherrios and Lattes . This is week 3- Write/Spell Your Name. We started this week's practice with some name tracing. Cherrios and Lattes provides the printable for some dotted letters. She suggested doing rainbow writing with this sheet. I showed Jacob but he was more interested in writing all the Jacobs. I started by modeling on the first name. Then I held his hand and we did it together. Finally I let him do the last three on his own with only my verbal prompts. He took this very seriously and was very proud of himself! I was surprised at how much he liked doing this activity. He has a long way to go but he did pretty well! One thing I had to repeat was not to go around the o and a more than once. He wanted to go around and around. This is an activity that I think he will want to do again! The next activity was Missing Letter Name Practice. We started by singing a little song I sing fo...

Build My Name

I had some more Styrofoam from boxes and wanted to re-purpose them. I decided in building blocks with Jacob's letter of his name. We have lettered blocks but this is just one more way to see his name and one more way to practice his name. I sliced the styrofoam to make the blocks sized from smallest to largest. This will hopefully help him learn the letter orders. I showed him the blocks and we talked about what word we saw spelled out with the blocks. We then read each letter and sang our song: J-clap, clap, clap, clap, clap A-clap, clap, clap, clap, clap C-clap, clap, clap, clap, clap O-clap, clap, clap, clap, clap B-clap, clap, clap, clap, clap We then knocked down the blocks and I let him play with them to see what he might do. He just played with them for a bit. I then suggested he build a tower. He went ahead and started building a tower. I told him to take caution and look at the letters to make sure the letters are in the correct di...

Structured Play

Search This Blog