Our theme for this month is Winter! The books we are reading are Snowy Day, The Mitten, There was a Cold Lady who Swallowed some Snow, and Snow.
Snowy Day- In our Snowy Day book, the main character, Peter, goes out into the snow and has many adventures. When we read our story we have Peter dolls and pretend snow to follow along with. We use our hands to feel the snow, copy the tracks Peter makes, and make snowmen and snowballs just like Peter! We are working on fine motor strength and control and visual tracking.
There was a Cold Lady- In this book, a "cold lady" eats various items, and when she starts coughing, up comes a snowman! We have a big "old lady" doll to go along with our story and the students are taking turns identifying the object from the book and putting it in the old lady's mouth. We are working on fine motor strength and control, using buttons to communicate and follow along with the story, identifying key vocabulary, and visual tracking.
Snow- In our Snow book, a little boy goes through his town telling everyone that it's going to snow, but nobody believes him. Finally, the snow starts falling and there's a big snowstorm! We use our buttons to follow along with the story, and we also practice tracking large snowflakes as they move up and down and side to side. At the end of the story we bring out our pretend snow to play in. We are focusing on button communication, identifying key vocabulary, and visual tracking.
The Mitten- In The Mitten book, a boy named Nikki loses his mitten in the snow. In the cold weather, many forest animals find the mitten and squeeze inside to get warm. We are focusing on identifying photographs of animals, fine motor strength and control, and visual tracking.
Arts & Crafts
Monday- We explored winter clothing and decorated winter hats with dot markers and pom poms. We practiced identifying colors and exercising fine motor control to hold the dot markers.
Tuesday- We made snowmen out of water bottles. We used paint brushes to paint on glue and placed tissue paper around the bottle. We exercised our fine motor control by holding the paint brushes and using bilateral coordination to rip the tissue paper.
Wednesday- We explored winter clothing and decorated mittens. We talked about symmetry as we painted one mitten and folded our paper over to have the mittens look the "same". We practiced identifying colors, exercising fine motor control to hold the paint brush, and using our hands functionally to push and rub the paper to spread out the paint.
Thursday- We made sun catcher snowmen. We used paint brushes and our hands to spread glue and water on to laminate. We covered it with tissue paper and then painted more glue and water on top. We practiced identifying colors and body parts, exercising fine motor control to hold the paintbrush and tissue paper, using controlled release to place the paper on to the laminate, and using bilateral coordination to stabilize the laminate with one hand and paint with the other.
We also welcomed a new nurse into our classroom, Lindsey. We had lots of fun playing with Lindsey and showing her our toys!
-The Barnyard Buddies
