Apple Sensory Box

The two little guys enjoyed playing with dry rice, foam apples, red cotton balls, acorns, silk flowers, walnuts, etc. They used spoons and bowls from our play kitchen taking the sensory box a step further in play- making Apple pie and Apple sauce.

I have had comments asking about how I control the mess of sensory box. My answer is I don't. Yes, my kids make a huge mess but hey they are kids when don't they make a huge mess? I am sitting and playing with them so I do not let them purposefully just dump but you cannot expect them to Keep every grain of rice in the box. I put the box away when we are finished and reserve the sensory box for Structured Play time.

Pouring and dumping, feeling different textures their hands that is what Sensory Play is all about. You do not have to be too creative in setting it up, leave that to the kids. They will quickly figure out how to play with the box.

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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 for Jak

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

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Structured Play

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