Play Based Learning Goals

In our class, we focus on specific play skills so that our students will have successful play interactions with their peers and those they may play with during integration opportunities. In order to keep track of what we are working on we created the following chart. The first box of the chart shows what specific play activities we are targeting. The second box indicates what specific language we are targeting at each area. The third box is the targeted play for our water/sand/sensory table. Our special education team has been really supporting this effort by creating picture symbols for the targeted vocabulary.

The year at a glance

October goals

Paintbrushes and Grip

Lately we have noticed that our students tend to hold paintbrushes by the end. This causes them to have limited control of the paintbrush. Last weekend I took home a bunch of our paintbrushes and cut them down. The students are now forced to hold the paintbrush closer to the brush head, increasing their control. The paintbrushes are easy to cut down using a handsaw and cut ends should be sanded to eliminate the possibility of splinters.

Mat Man on the Interactive White Board

I recently created a Mat Man activity for the Interactive White Board, based on the same activity from Handwriting Without Tears. After listening to the song, we created Mat Man on the Interactive White Board and then the students were given the opportunity to draw Mat Man. I chose to use clip art for the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hands as I felt it was more concrete for the students as opposed to circles and half-circles. We have been stacking the students drawings from month to month on the bulletin board so we can flip quickly through them to see their progress.

Here are our pictures for December.

DIY Sensory Bag



 

We made this sensory bag using four easy to find items. We got a heavy duty Ziploc bag from our stock order (TDSB stock catalogue) and added 2 bottles of coloured hair gel from Dollarama, and a whole bunch of sparkles. We then taped all the way around on the seams with packing tape. The students have been enjoying using this on the light table (as seen below), drawing shapes, tracing letters, and making hand prints.

 

 

Fine Motor Activity for Outdoor Snow Play

Today we went outside to explore the winter wonderland. We added food colouring and water to Dollarama spray bottles to "paint" with. Squeezing the triggers on the spray bottles is a great way to develop fine motor control. The students really enjoyed "painting" the snow.

Single Click on Mouse

Double clicking the mouse to access programs can be very frustrating for students with fine motor difficulties. The quickest way to fix this is to turn your mouse into a single click mouse following the instructions below (for Windows 7):

1. Go to CONTROL PANEL
2. Select FOLDER OPTIONS
3. Select SINGLE CLICK TO OPEN AN ITEM
4. Select APPLY/OK

Simple tricks for puzzles

Here are a couple simple tricks to use when accommodating students who are working on puzzles.

Using a three inch binder to raise the puzzle so the student can see the top of the puzzle easier.

 

Mixing the pieces from two puzzles together to add a challenge to put in puzzles

for students for whom put in puzzles are too easy.

 



Hands on Fun at the Water Table

This week we built a new hands-on activity at our water table. The goal was to have the students use squeeze materials (turkey basters, squeeze bottles) to help develop their fine motor control. We used wire cube shelving pieces, tubes, and funnels to develop the activity. The students were extremely excited about trying it out. It has been a huge success and students who have previously shown limited attention at activities have stayed and played for more than 40 minutes. We ended up adding blue food colouring so it was easier for the students to see the water moving in the tubes. The wire shelving and tubing were purchased at Home Depot, and the funnels, turkey basters and squeeze bottle were purchased at Dollarama.

All set up.

Learning to use the turkey basters to squeeze water into the tubes

 

 

With blue food colouring added. Working together to fill the container at the bottom!

Experimenting with squeeze bottles.

Great Find!

I made a great find at Target last week. They are selling multipacks of small sized dry erase markers. These are great for little hands to develop proper grip and control.