Thursday, November 3, 2016

Happy Thursday Students, Parents, and Carers!

We began the day with integration, sensory diets, ring toss and play time. Play is so important for creativity, language arts and communication skills, mathematics skills, role-play and drama, fine motor skills, teamwork, and social skills. Ring toss is a great tool to work on our fine and gross motor skills, visual spatial awareness, hand-eye coordination, accuracy, turn taking, sportsmanship, and math skills.

Math Ring Toss

Play with Trains

Selfie! : )

Brainstorming our movie idea.

Avery is completing a little sensory circuit to help keep his body calm and his mind clear.

As a group, some of our friends had an amazing idea and decided to make a movie! We went over the title (Thomas and Friends), characters (Harry, Alyssa, Brooklyn, Voldemort, Digger, Thomas, James, etc.), setting (Thomas Train Station in New York City), problem(s) (Voldemort kidnaps Alyssa and Brooklyn and tries to get poison from his supporters), solution (Super Hero Harry saves the girls and defeats Voldemort at Hogwarts Castle. Everyone did so well with their creative and abstract thinking, oral communication skills, social skills, problem solving skills, language arts story telling skills, math skills (addition, subtraction, sequencing, time), teamwork, and social collaboration. 

Here we are working on our fine motor skills and letter formations.

It was so much fun and everyone demonstrated great auditory processing skills, teamwork, social skills, sportsmanship, motor planning, body mapping, sequencing, gross motor skills, proprioception skills, vestibular and bilateral movements, and balance and coordination.

In Mindfulness today we went over two calming and deep breathing yoga videos. All of our friends were so attentive, focused, determined, and calm while working on their breathing, body awareness and body mapping, and flexibility.

To start off our afternoon we decided to vote on Dramatic Role-Play Situations, finish our Ghost Busters Game, discuss What If scenarios, or go over our Cooking plans. This was a very difficult session as we had to use our compromise skills, social skills, problem solving skills, oral communication skills, listening skills, math skills, and complex communication and flexibility skills. We also went over our emotions and feelings as some of our friends were getting frustrated, annoyed, mad, upset, and sad that we could not agree on activities, time allotted, and who gets to go first! Afterwards we all needed sensory breaks to cool down our engines, co-regulate, and move our bodies!

Sensory Breaks

Working through our emotions and discussing our feelings.

The very last session of the day was led by Mr. Dean. He made a great team building game involving non-verbal communication, auditory processing, and language and phonics skills. Unfortunately, this, too, led to social problem solving. Again we used our problem solving skills, oral communication skills, listening skills, math skills, and complex communication and flexibility skills. We had a great afternoon for social problem solving and some great discussions on feelings and emotions! Lastly, we did get a chance to play a game called Speed Stacks. This was a fun game using our fine motor skills, bilateral movements, turn taking, team building, sportsmanship, and math skills. There are various games and ways to play different challenging tasks in a team environment.

HOMEWORK TIPS:

1) Work on two and three-digit addition and subtraction questions, as well as multiplication and division questions whether you write down some questions for your child, or use math to cook, clean, set the table, do chores, play games, create a game, divide using coins and prices for things they are interested in, etc.

2) Discuss good and poor sportsmanship. Use examples and pictures, videos, role-play, etc. Also, discuss big/medium/small problems and have your child make a chart showing where they think specific incidents should fall under.

3) Spend 15 minutes reading a book of your child's choice, a cartoon, instructions, recipe, comic strip, etc. Make reading fun, engaging, an adventure, and not a boring chore. You can also have your child create their own picture story book using the 5-Finger Retell Model.

4) Wherever you are-in the kitchen, basement, garage, backyard, car, grocery store, bank, etc.-ask your child what if _____ starts or ends with a particular sound/digraph. For example, while in the car, ask your child what sound is after the /c/ sound. Answer would be /ar/ sound. You could also engage in rhymes, for example, what rhymes with 'wheel', 'seat', 'belt', etc.

5) Have your child come up with their own Minute to Win It activity (e.g. look online, see past episodes on You Tube, make a similar one to Ms. Josephine's stacking activity, etc.

Mr. Jacob : )