I am so very happy to see how excited everyone is to be back at Oakwood! All of our friends were all smiles today, and did a great job introducing themselves to our new student, Carter. The day began with lots of laughs and stories about our summer holiday. After all of our friends arrived and we finished chatting (for the time being), we went over our new daily schedule and time table. This was followed by a vote to see what our morning exercise would entail. There was lots of great discussion, compromise, and patience with our friends during our social problem solving session. In the end, we decided on an outdoors-Ariel dance-tag game, as well as two Go Noodle dance routines. Morning exercises/ sensory diets/ Go Noodle dancing are very important for the students to help them regulate, and demonstrate great body and muscle awareness, proprioceptive, vestibular and bilateral movements, fine and gross motor skills, motor planning, auditory processing, and social problem solving.
Outdoor-Ariel-Tag
Time for some dancing!
Class Snack Time
After we completed our morning exercise I asked the class to come up with rules that both they, the students, and Mr. Jacob have to follow. There was some great discussion, brain storming, questioning and answering, and laughs all around! One of my rules is that I cannot "scream", but "if you have to you can yell a bit" (quote on quote haha). Next, we played a fun game of Summer Charades where each student had to act out one of their favourite activities this summer, and the rest of the class guessed.
Prior to gym class we had some choosing time and play time with our friends. This is a great opportunity to explore and implement the DIR Floortime model, as well as work on social skills, turn taking, patience, two way communication, social problem solving, abstract and creative thinking, constructive play, drama and role play, mathematics and language arts.
In gym class today we played three different games with our friends in Ms. Andrea's and Ms. Jessica's class: Alphabet Soup, Atom Catchers, and Link Tag. Everyone demonstrated great auditory processing skills, hand-eye coordination, teamwork, sportsmanship, motor planning, fine and gross motor skills, proprioception skills, vestibular and bilateral movements, and balance and coordination.
Before lunch we joined the rest of academic for a "Mindfulness" session where we worked on calming exercises, deep breathing, stretching, drama, and regulation.
After lunch we worked on some Fine Motor Skills and participated in a Minute to Win It relay race. Fine motor skill (or dexterity) is the coordination of small muscles, in movements—usually involving the synchronization of hands and fingers—with the eyes. Both of these activities are great for the pencil grip, fine motor development, phonics, spelling, team work, oral communication skills, sportsmanship, problem solving, math skills, and social problem solving.
In the sensory gym we worked on our hand-eye coordination, teamwork, sportsmanship, motor planning, fine and gross motor skills, proprioception skills, vestibular and bilateral movements, math, time, phonics and rhyming skills, and balance and coordination.
At the end of the day we went over our Zones of Regulation and used different coloured blocks to symbolize how our day was, and how different times of the day went. We also got to share our own ideas and thoughts on how our day went, and took turns saying one nice thing about our friends from today's work.
What a fun and successful first day back! I hope everyone has a lovely evening and I shall see everyone tomorrow for Day 2!
Mr. Jacob : )
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