Dear Families,

Our February unit theme is Opposites.  We haven't had a lot of time to focus on our books and activities with all of our snow days, but we have some fun books and activities to look forward to.  The books that we will be reading for this unit have themes related to opposites, and we are also including additional language to emphasize these points in the stories.

The opposites concepts we will be exploring in this unit are those that we can explore and understand from a tactile perspective, as well as visually.  

Goodnight Gorilla-  While Goodnight Gorilla is primarily a picture book, we added additional language to incorporate more language about opposites.  We will be exploring the words "In" and "Out" as we read and take our animals in and out of their cages, just like Gorilla does in the story.

Better Move on Frog- In this book, Frog is looking for a home, but all of the holes that he finds are already full.  With this book we are exploring the concepts of "Full" and "Empty" as we feel various containers with objects inside.  

Opposnakes-  Opposnakes is a fun book because we can explore many kinds of vocabulary relating to opposites.  We get our own snakes (accordion tubes) and copy the opposites in the book, like big/small, fast/slow, hot/cold, straight/tangled, and one/many.  

Titch- Titch is a little boy who only gets small things, while his big brother Pete gets big things.  We use doubles of various tactiles for our students to feel, look at, and compare to help us understand the differences between big and small.  




For Arts & Crafts this past week we made up all of the Snow Unit activities that we missed from the last storm!  We made snow globes, we painted snowflakes on to coffee filters, and we painted Peter in the snow from our Snowy Day book.  




Our Music for our Opposites Unit:

It's Music Time-  This is a brand new song that we are incorporating in to our music time.  It's based on our Music Therapy kit.  This song helps us get ready for music time by first getting our bodies ready and using our instruments to play along, then using our buttons to participate in the singing, followed by using our voices with our echo-microphones!  We brought out our echo-microphones for play times this week to help develop a cause and effect relationship between the students' vocalizations and the auditory effects of the microphone.  It took some time to catch it at the right time, but all the kids got a big kick out of hearing their own echoes on the microphones!  We're hoping that with more exposure, we can continue to develop our intentional vocalization skills.  

5 Little Monkeys-  In our case, 4 little monkeys!  Each child gets a turn to bounce on our big red ball as we sing 4 Little Monkeys.  The other three students have a button so that they can follow along and finish our song with "No more monkeys jumping on the bed".  We also program our buttons to request a turn to bounce on the ball.

5 Little Snowmen- This is our counting song!  We have snowmen made out of bells.  When we finish each set, we use our fine motor strength and visual/motor control to pull off one of our snowmen.  Then we practice our one to one correspondence as we count the snowmen that are left.

Chubby Little Snowman-  In the original song, a Bunny comes along and bites the snowman's carrot nose.  In our song, our snowman has oral motor toys as a nose!  We sing this song a few times, and each time the snowman has a different nose (Nuk, spoon, toothette, P) and instead of a Bunny, the Barnyard Buddies come along and bite the snowman's nose!




-The Barnyard Buddies

Dear Families,

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