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.

We All Go Traveling By

My students have really been enjoying the book We All Go Traveling By by Sheena Roberts. Each page has a different method of travel in a different colour and a specific noise. I made an activity where after reading the story my students identify the colour of the specific object from three choices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorting Activity

This week I hosted other DK teachers who have Interactive White Boards. They came to watch my students use the board. Here is the sorting activity that we created as part of this observation.

 

 

In the activity students pull out various pictures of hats and jackets that are hidden behind the blue rectangle. We used a variety of actual pictures and clip art drawings to challenge the students more. We also included a verbal prompt (as indicated by the speaker icon).

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.

Hibernation Station Activities

This month we read the story Hibernation Station by Michelle Meadows. I made an activity for the Promethean to go along with it. In the activity students move pictures of animals onto a train. We stop on each page while reading to see which animals need to be added. Then we match animals and then there are several pages of counting animals.



Circle Time Activity

Here is our circle time/attendance activity. We usually do this right after lunch as some of our students are at integration in the morning and three days a week we have gym.

On our attendance page students move their name/pictures to the picture of the classroom. "Jessica's" picture is attached to an invisible line and using "Move along a path" it only allows her to move it a certain way in order to teach her to move items on the board.

 

On the next page we are working on identifying staff members and answering yes/no questions. The universal no, and the green yes circle are done with "drag a copy" allowing the students to use as many as necessary. We ask the student if they saw the person today/if we will see (referring to our visual schedule) and then model a yes/no response for them. The students then select the appropriate response and move it to the person.



 

On the next page we dress "Billy" for the weather. We discuss what we wore today and what he needs to wear and students take turns adding a piece of clothing.

On the next page our special helper gets to select a song for us to sing. When they press the song picture it jumps to the visuals for that specific song.

 

 

Here is a sample of the visuals for the songs. (This is our current favourite).

Why I Love the Bitsboard App for iPad

I love the Bitsboard App for the iPad!

We have one iPad in my classroom that was generously donated by students at Whitney Public School who fund-raised in order to buy it for us. My class is made up of a combination of verbal and non-verbal students. Earlier this year we were having trouble assessing our students using a variety of techniques including the Brigance. My EA and I both felt that our students were not engaged in the assessments. Last year I was told about Bitsboard by teachers at Beverly School, so I decided to set it up.

Bitsboard allows you to use pre-made libraries of images, sentences, adjectives, nouns, letters, numbers and all sorts of other categories. You can also build your own activity, for instance we are working on recognizing our names in print, so I took pictures of all my students names (typed out in Comics Sans). The pre-made libraries come with an audio prompt, and you can add your own audio to the libraries you create. Bitsboard then allows you to work on a variety of activities for each library. Below is an image of some of the activity choices.

So far we have mainly used the Flashcards and Photo Touch activities. The Photo Touch activity gives you options for how few and how many images you want displayed for the student to choose from. So far my students are only asked to select the correct answer from a maximum of three choices, and we have had amazing success. The students I have been using Bitsboard with are so engaged by it, that they are able to work through multiple boards. (Even better - Bitsboard scores the activity for you so you can keep track - not on the actual program but I just write down how they did in my notebook as they work. See sample below). 

Prior to using Bitsboard I would tell you that some of my students could not consistently recognize any letters, shapes or colours. I WAS WRONG! One of my students who has a very limited attention span, showed me that she can identify at least 7 letters, 4 colours and knows a lot of descriptive words (i.e. running, drinking, crying). 

If you do have an iPad in your classroom, I encourage you to download it from the App store. I believe the App only costs $2.99, which is an amazing price for such a useful App.