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

Halloween Madness

Where did October go?? My life seems so nonstop right now, which honestly, it has been since the day I delivered my second child ten years ago, then add in a third, and I'm constantly in search for a stop sign. I'd even take a yield at this point. As much as I wanted to post about each little fun thing we did the past month, ya, didn't happen.

Our October was full of fun all around. I remember last year at this time trying to get Aiden to repeat the Lings "oo" and "ee" and what a better way than with all the wonderful sounds of Halloween! He gave me pumpkin-"uhin", and bat-"a", and even a long o sound for ghost ... but no "oo" and no "ee". Well, this Halloween he pronounces them both beautifully and from all our work last year, I could tell he found that vocabulary file in that cute little head of his and just took off.

This year we heard pumpkin (still without that /p/), witch (its and ee-ee-ee), ghost (now with a good /s/ and final /t/ and the lovely "ooooo" to go with it!), bat, trick-or-treat (ih-o-eet), owl (he says the best owl), moon, broom (which he really has trouble saying words that have the /u/ sound, but says it perfectly in isolation) and so much more.

What are the fun things we did to immerse Aiden in the world of Halloween and fall vocabulary?

I made pumpkins from construction paper, cut out different shaped face parts, then let Aiden glue them on as we talked all about it - he even announced he was giving it ears all on his own. (Vocab - eyes, nose, mouth, ears, pumpkin, triangle, circle, glue, sticky, orange, yellow, black). Even though he knows all this vocabulary, we worked on two and three word phrases such as circle eyes, black mouth, glue it down, glue is sticky etc.

getting his pumpkin off the fridge to show daddy

I made a picture chart which labeled different Halloween terms, then copied it again to cut out each card to play matching games, to which candy corn was the treat ... Aiden DOES NOT like candy corn ... so we switched to m&m's and played Halloween bingo with them.

Showing a picture with a word is also an excellent pre-literacy/phonological awareness skill to teach that letters, make words, and have meaning. After Aiden matched each separate card to the correct picture, we would "read" each word from left to right, top to bottom.

We went on a fieldtrip to learn all about COSTUMES and found the perfect one for my little monkey (which was LAST YEAR's costume).

Halloween 2009

This year he chose Mickey Mouse - his new all time favorite character.

Halloween 2010

He was so excited to try it on when we got home and was in awe looking at himself. I had to fight the little stinker though to put it on for trick-or-treating. He sure knew what to do to get that candy though and would run up to each door, knock (even if they were sitting outside, but had to knock because that's how we practiced all month), open his bag, and say, "Ih-oh-eet" and a quick "Tan tu" as he ran off to the next house.

We visited a pumpkin patch and ate fresh Kettle Corn and pet the (very few) animals they had, and went on a hayride.

I printed out a Halloween activity from the Listening Room, which was a book about how a witch found a piece of paper and made it into a house for her and her cat. We followed all the steps she took to make the house and in the end, the house was also a PUMPKIN! Very cute! Love this site.

We made good ol' Betty Crocker CUPCAKES with orange frosting and topped them off with owls and pumpkins. (SO much vocabulary when cooking/baking and honestly, TONS of fun too!)

Turn off the music on the right to hear him counting the yumminess before he gobbled one up.

(without captioning)

(with captioning - works on my Mac, but not my PC?)

I bought tons of stickers to decorate cut out pumpkins or just stick on plain old white paper and played "ghost" and read tons of Halloween books and sang songs and looked through every.single Halloween aisle at every.single.store we walked into.

The boy definitely knows Halloween.

Next up ... leaves, apples, and Thanksgiving.

From Snow to Sunshine

Just a few weeks ago we were overloaded with snow. Since it was too cold to go outside and play, we brought it in.

Aiden got to SCOOP and DUMP, make HILLS then pretend to drive the trucks UP and DOWN the hill, make SNOWBALLS, play find the (insert object), BURY, DIG, and "ooooo, the snow is so COLD, brrrr", FILL the cup up until it's FULL then PAT-PAT-PAT the snow down, and even make a mini SNOWMAN ... all from the kitchen sink.



Oh, and his big sister even taught him about "yellow snow" and how never to eat it.


Aiden has played in the snow before, but not like this. Everytime we took him outside he sort of stayed away from touching too much of it. It took him a little bit to get his hands "cold and wet", but before too long, he was having a blast.

Fast forward just a few weeks and it's feeling like Spring outside! The sun is shining and I can't keep Aiden inside. So I picked up an indoor herb garden to plant with Aiden.

With this Aiden got to POUR the water into the BOWL to BREAK UP the SOIL and MIX it all up with a big SPOON, SCOOP the soil into the PLANT POTS, OPEN the SEED packets and POUR them into the soil then PAT-PAT-PAT the soil down, and pour more SOIL into the POTS, then WATER the PLANTS so they can grow.

Both of these activities also worked on Aiden's sensory integration (SI) goals, such as being able touch and feel different textures but even more so, being able to sustain attention to one activity for more than 5 minutes (which we're working very hard on)! It is very important that he feels a sense of accomplishment to help him attain this goal.

And as you can see, he is very proud of his final product!