Dear Families,

Another week has gone by!  We're almost done with our All About Me unit, we have a few more fun projects coming up next week and then we'll be moving on to more fun things.  This past week we had some special activities!  We went upstairs to the high school and visited the superintendent, Dr. Conti, his staff, and the director of Special Ed. Louise D'Amato.  The kids were very excited to meet some new people and visit a new part of the building.  We also went to the Animal Center to visit some of the animals!  We saw an alligator, turtles, snakes, a bird, guinea pigs, fish, and some big bugs.  

We've been working very hard at our Arts&Crafts activities this past week, but...they're a secret! We wanted to give our parents a surprise for our Back To School Night!!!  So you can expect a nice surprise when you come into our classroom in a few weeks!  

We tried using smocks to paint with, but they were a little to big for the kids!  So we decided to be brave and paint smock-less this week!

We incorporated use of buttons and visuals for our story time this week.  When we choose stories to read for story time, I like to look for quality text that has repetition so that your children are able to participate in the reading of the story.  In addition to the buttons, we use tactiles to help us make connections between words and objects, and to help keep up our interest in the story.  Here's some pictures of us at story time.

Here we are using our hankies practice waving as we sing our Good Morning song!

And, of course, having lots of fun with our new friends!!!

-The Barnyard Buddies

Dear Parents,

We had a very successful second week at school!  We're starting to get into a solid routine at school as well, and here's some of the things we did this week.

At music time, we have five different songs that we sing.  We use tactile symbols to represent the songs, so the students are able to feel the representations and take turns choosing what song they want to sing.  Each month features 4-5 different songs that pertain to our unit.  The reason why we sing the same songs for a month is to give the students time to adjust and start predicting the music.  We incorporate manipulatives so that students can use their tactile and visual senses along with their auditory sense to track, touch, pull, push, hold, etc.  This week our songs are 5 Red Apples, the Wheels on the Bus, I'm a Little Teapot, 5 Little Ducks, and Old MacDonald.   In our 5 Red Apples song, each child gets a foam apple tree with red bells (apples).  As we sing the song, we hold on and shake our apple trees, and at the end of our song, we pull off one of our apples.  In this song we are working on bilateral coordination, object manipulation, visual-motor control, and hand strengthening.  All three kids are starting to pull the apples off by themselves during our song!  During our Wheels on the Bus song, students get a small bus toy to hold while we sing.  In this song we are working on object manipulation, tactile exploration, hand strengthening, and visual tracking.  When we sing I'm a Little Teapot, students get  a toy teapot to hold and explore.  We work on hand strengthening, tactile exploration, bilateral coordination, and wrist and hand movement.  In our 5 Little Ducks song, each child gets a rubber duckie to hold, and the teacher has small ducks on a felt background.  As we sing the song, we work on bilateral coordination, object manipulation, and hand strengthening to squeeze our ducks to make them "quack".  Then we take turns using bilateral stabilization skills, visual-motor integration and hand strengthening to pull the ducks off of the blue felt.  During our Old MacDonald song, we take turns choosing an animal to sing about.  We work on hand strengthening and visual motor integration as we hold the animal and put it onto a felt board.  We also work on our communication skills as we use buttons to sing along with the animal noises in the song.  

 During story time this week, we read Is your mama a llama?, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and Going on a Bear Hunt.  We read the same books over the course of the month, that coincide with our theme.  We repeat the books several times throughout the month because the repetition allows the students to predict and participate in the reading of the books, as well as develop their vocabulary with targeted words from the text. We use flashlights to help us look at important visuals on the pages, we touch the covers of the books to find the title and author, underlined with wikki stix for added tactile experience.  For this week we primarily focused on listening and engaging in tactile experiences.  Next week we are going to record text on our buttons so that our students can read along with me during the repeating text!  Here's Vraj exploring some glue and paper, and Ryan holding onto some branches from our "forest" that the characters went through during our Going on a Bear Hunt story.

It wasn't all hard work, we also had LOTS of fun this week!  We explored our playground equipment, lots of toys, and even had our first "sensory pool" day! 

I also wanted to reiterate our sanitation policy, since we had a few students who had colds this week.  All toys and surfaces in the classroom are cleaned on a daily basis.  We wait until 2:30 when the kids leave to make sure the students don't come into contact with the sprays and wipes, and also to give the toys time to disinfect and dry out.  Even if the toys weren't taken out that day, everything on our shelves is disinfected at the end of the day.  We do take into consideration that some of our students like to put toys in their mouth, or sometimes drool on the toys, which is why we usually have multiples of the same toy, so that if one is mouthed by a student, we have additional toys to use with the other students.  So if you happen to notice your child has the same toy that you saw another student with earlier, or notice children holding the same toy in pictures, please rest assured that it's probably a multiple of the same toy!  We also clean all tabletop surfaces, chairs, mats, and the rug each afternoon.  Also, we never share oral motor toys.  We have several utensils, cups, plates, etc. here at school in case a parent forgets to send something in one day, but each child has their initials on their oral motor toys and extra spoons, and they are never shared with other students.  Those are also washed at the end of each day.  If you have any additional questions about our cleaning practices, please feel free to contact me.  

Have a great weekend, we can't wait for week 3!

-The Barnyard Buddies

Dear Parents,

Welcome to the Barnyard Buddies!  We had a great first week of school!  This week we had a nice, slow transition into the classroom routines and expectations.  It is a big transition from spending time at home to six hours of school, so we're introducing new activities one day at a time and building up the duration and expectations over the next few weeks.  

We spent a lot of time this week bonding with our students, engaging in quality interaction time, and exploring various toys and items in the classroom.  Vraj found some new favorite toys, like the flower chime garden and the Mini-lite box.  Ryan loved our new flower chime garden too, but the Mozart cube is still his favorite! Josh's favorite toys were the Baby Einstein drum and the Push and Spin ball popper.  On Wednesday, we had our very first Morning meeting! We practiced waving hello by using handkerchiefs and singing a song.  We played with mirrors to see who came to school, we woke up our senses by listening to bells, smelling lemons, tasting spoons, looking at lights, and touching leis.  Vraj and Ryan loved smelling the lemon scent!  Josh's favorite was touching the lei.  And finally, we did our weather song, where we felt water from a spray bottle (rain), watched a flashlight (sun), tracked cotton balls (clouds), and felt the wind from a fan.  

We also introduced story time on Tuesday.  Our stories are "sensory stories".  They incorporate tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), visual and auditory exploration in our themed stories.  We are starting out with our All About Me/Family unit.  This week we read Going on a Bear Hunt, where a family encounters all kinds of nature while the look for a bear.  We felt grass, mud (playdoh), a felt and smelled a forest (sticks and leaves), water, and a snowstorm (pompoms).  Then at the very end, we saw and heard the bear!! (from our ipad).  Josh and Ryan liked listening to and touching the rustling grass, but Vraj LOVED splashing in the water, so much so that he got all the teachers wet!!  

We made lots of new friends in other classrooms at playground time.  The other kids are very eager to interact with our Barnyard Buddies.  Josh had some new friends take turns pushing him around the playground and showed him all our new playground equipment!  Vraj and Ryan had some new friends push them on the swings.  Ryan had some friends from last year who were VERY excited when they saw him in the hallways this week!  


We were so busy having fun and bonding with our new students, that we completely forgot to take pictures!  So stay tuned for next week's blog, and I'll include some then.  We can't wait for Week 2!

-The Barnyard Buddies