Wednesday Workout - BEARS

Every couple of weeks I choose a core area as our main focus at home. Whether it be a specific theme, prepositions, following two step directions, a specific letter sound or whatever the "focus" may be, we center it around listening and language for that time. I'm going to do my best to share some of our activities every Wednesday, but we'll see as time schedules tell. I'd love for you to comment on any activity ideas you have to add for all to see!

The past couple weeks, we've been working on BEARS.

It started at Aiden's speech therapy a few weeks ago when wonderful Ms. Cheryl read Copy Me, Copy Cub. She used a brown paper bag for the cave, pictures of bears printed from the internet for mama and baby bear, cotton balls for the snow (which Aiden glued on the "cave"), then they tore up brown construction paper together for the leaves to put inside the cave. Very cute idea and Aiden loved acting it out as she read it to him.

That same week, Aiden's AVT read him Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Aiden had never heard the story before, and with all the repetitions, I figured it a good book to work on three-four word phrases.

From there I extended it to bears in general - brown bears, black bears, polar bears, panda bears, and of course, teddy bears (and made a page for his experience book on the different kind of bears). Since we were talking so much about bears, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to also hone in on the /b/ sound since Aiden has trouble with it (he has trouble with a lot of his stops in speech production).

There are a lot of Goldilocks and the Three Bears books out at the library, each with their own twist. Some seemed too difficult and busy for a two year old, so I picked the easiest one that stuck to the story line as I know it. Dr. D had this boardbook by Bryon Barton, which was just short enough to keep Aiden's attention.

As I read the story, we act it out with different toys Aiden has to represent each scene. This story is also great in identifying the concept of size (big vs small, big, bigger, biggest, etc), adjectives (soft, hard, hot, cold etc.) and most fun of all, using different kinds of voices. To emphasize the story and concepts in yet another way, I made stick puppets and scenes from pictures I found on the internet.

We've also been reading other bear books such as these,

and one of my all time favorites which can be found here.

I'm also teaching Aiden the infamous teddy bear rhyme (I remember singing this as a kid jump roping):

Teddy bear, teddy bear turn around,

Teddy bear, teddy bear touch the ground,

Teddy bear, teddy bear read the news,

Teddy bear, teddy bear tie your shoes,

Teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs,

Teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers,

Teddy bear, teddy bear turn off the light,

Teddy bear, teddy bear say goodnight.

We each get a teddy bear and play together and I often find him singing parts of it as he plays with his teddy bears on his own.

Other songs I found we like:

Three Brown Bears (sing to Three Blind Mice)

Three brown bears, three brown bears,

See all their beds, see all their chairs,

The mommy cooked in a big brown pot,

The daddy's porridge was way too hot,

The baby bear cried a lot,

Three brown bears,

Three brown bears.

Hibernation Song (sing to Are You Sleeping) (and works on those "ing" verbs we've been practicing)

Are you eating, are you eating

little bear, little bear,

Eating nuts and berries,

For the long, hard winter

Little bear, little bear

Are you sleeping, are you sleeping

little bear, little bear

Sleeping through the winter

You are hibernating

little bear, little bear

Are you waking, are you waking

little bear, little bear

Now that it is Springtime

Sleeping time is over

Little bear, little bear.

A couple other things we've done:

• print out color sheets of the letter B, b and of different bears from the Internet
• play different songs/cartoons on You Tube to hear them in different voices
• give Aiden the props and let him tell me the story OR give him any of the books we've been reading and let him tell it to me (which of course is all over, but GREAT way to try and expand those sentences!)

Vocabulary taught: bear, cub, cave, snowing, scratching, waking, biggest vs big, smallest vs. small, hard, soft, just right, porridge, forest