Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Happy Tuesday Students, Parents, and Carers!

We began our day with integration, sensory diets, and Floortime (child-led play). Play is great for creativity, language arts and complex communication skills, abstract thinking, problem solving skills,  inquiry and mathematics skills, role-play and drama, fine motor skills, teamwork, and social skills. Sensory diets are so important for regulation, 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. 

Here we are completing our OWAs (Ontario Writing Assessments) by using auditory and language processing and comprehension, letter formation and awareness, phonics and phonological awareness, and printing skills.

In the morning two of the boys continued their Team Building game called "Castle Catapult". The boys had to use their reading skills, language & auditory comprehension and processing skills, phonics and phonological awareness, two-way communication skills, complex communication and abstract thinking skills, problem solving skills, measurement, fractions, and number sense and numeracy, visual spatial skills, reading skills, hand-eye coordination, sportsmanship and team work skills.

Mr. Carter was our teacher today and went over months, weeks, dates, days, year, weather, time (past, present/now, future), and feelings. We also discussed how our Easter long weekend went and what we did!

In gym today we played a new game called Hula Hoops. Students had to work together to accumulate the most amount of hula hoops by running, throwing, and catching balls in hula hoops spread out around the gym. These games challenged the students' math skills, 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.

In Mindfulness today we practiced being calm, still, and focusing on our breathing and heart beat. All of our friends were so attentive, focused, determined, and calm while working on their breathing, body awareness and body mapping, regulation, and flexibility.

In the afternoon we got together with Ms. Monika and Ms. B to participate in their closing activity to say farewell to the boys! Everyone used auditory & language processing and comprehension skills, phonological awareness and phonics, reading and letter recognition, printing and letter formation, memory recall and application skills, fine motor skills, and ideation and abstract thinking. The boys had to think about and reflect on their time with Ms. B and Ms. Monika, and then make a t-shirt and reflection card.

  Sensory Break

Lastly, we went over our Zones of Regulation and discussed how we were feeling today while enjoying the lovely weather! 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.

Have a great evening!

Mr. Jacob : )

REMINDER: 3 out of our 4 TAs will be leaving this week (Ms. Monika, Ms. B, and Mr. Dean are all finishing their program placements). Ms. D will continue to be with us for a couple of weeks. Currently we do not have any TAs replacing them, but we should have at least 2 TAs coming to help us in May. We apologize for the inconveniences and reduced integration during this process.