Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks. I have updated our objectives from the original ones we focused on because Carter mastered those skills. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives. Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. The highlighted objectives are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:
- Take turns in a simple game.
- Understand the meaning of mine, his, hers.
- Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature). Since Carter was doing so well sorting by shape and color I already started having him sort by other features.
- String beads or other objects.
- Count to 3 and understand what the numbers mean. Carter can count to 3, but we're still working on understanding what each number means.
- I put together a winter sensory bin for Carter. I used shredded paper to look like snow. Then I added cotton balls, a snowman cookie cutter, and dead sticks that had fallen off our tree outside. Carter had a blast scooping up shredded paper as well as dropping it out and watching it tumble back down. Then he used the stick to stir everything in the tub up. He was having a blast until he turned and whacked me in the face with the stick and had to go to time out. He didn't want to play with the bin again the rest of the day. I guess he was worried he'd do it again!
 |
| Poor Carter man fell and hit his eye on the corner of a chair, his eye was still looking pretty bruised on Monday! |
- While grocery shopping on Monday we walked past a bin of Play-Doh on sale so I grabbed a container of white Play-Doh. I then took the Play-Doh and rolled it out on the table so we could make tracks in it like it was snow. I pulled out the book "Tracks in the Snow" to show Carter the tracks that were made in snow. Then I used one of his safari animals to make some tracks. I then let him go on to make animal tracks and even grabbed some cars to make tire tracks. After a while of making tracks I showed him how to make a snowman by rolling up 3 different sized spheres: a small, medium, and large. I really talked up the sizes and had him help me decide which one was the biggest and needed to go at the bottom, which one was the medium sized and went next, and which one was the smallest and went on top. We built a snowman a few times and then Carter decided he needed to make the snowman's eyes and hat so he decorated the snowman. It was adorable!
 |
| Making tracks in our Play-Doh snow. |
 |
| Building a snowman out of the Play-Doh. |
 |
| More tracks, this time with cars. |
- I drew snowmen and made each snowman have a different colored scarf. Then I made hats in each of the different colors. I showed Carter the snowmen and asked what color each of their scarves were. Then I gave him a hat, asked him what color it was and told him to put it on the appropriate snowman. When he was finished we counted to see how many snowmen there were. Then I put the snowmen in his winter sensory bin to play with.
- To practice lacing I drew an outline of Carter's hand to make a mitten. I had to draw the outline a good distance away from his hand because he didn't like it when the pencil touched his hand. Then I hole punched all the way around the mitten and showed him how to lace yarn in and out of the holes. Lacing is a bit advanced for him right now. He was able to put the yarn through the hole and pull it through, but then he'd pull the yarn all the way through and never made it to the next hole. I figure it's something good for us to practice every now and then.
 |
| Lacing the mitten. |
- I went through Ty and my basket of stocking caps along with Carter's basket and Elise's basket. I picked out 4 hats belonging to each of us. I showed Carter the basket of hats. He immediately pulled out one of his hats and said "Carcar's". I told him yes it was his and had him say, "mine". Then I pulled out one of Elise's hats and asked him whose he thought it was. He excitedly yelled, "Mommy's!" so I tried putting it on my head. He realized it didn't fit. I showed him it was smaller than his hat and told him it belonged to Sissy Elise. We started a pile for her next to his hat. I pulled out one of Ty's hats and he told me it was daddy's so we made "his" pile. Then Carter found one of my hats so we made a pile of my hats. I pulled out hats one at a time and had Carter choose which pile he thought it belonged in. If he guessed incorrectly, we'd try it out, comparing the hat we had to a hat in the pile to see if they were the same size. We talked a lot about it being his hat, her hat, or my hat. I really emphasized using these words as we worked. I was impressed with how well Carter did sorting the hats. As we put them away we counted the hats to see how many of each of our hats we had sorted.
 |
| Sorting stocking caps. |
 |
| Adding one of his hats to Elise's pile. We took it out and compared it to the other hats which made him realize it was too big and he moved it to his pile. |
 |
| Adding a hat to daddy's pile. |
- The P.E. teacher at the school I used to teach at would give the students 2 paper plates each, one for each foot, and would have them "ice skate" on the gym floor. It was so much fun for them and I thought of that activity as I was planning our winter theme. I thought it might be a little bit difficult for Carter, but he did amazingly and absolutely loved it! It was so cute to watch him skate along our kitchen floor. It didn't take him long to realize it didn't work once he hit the carpet, so he turned around and skated some more on the linoleum.
- I bought a bunch of shaving foam on sale at some point in my teaching career because my students loved to practice writing their word work words in shaving foam on their tables as a little treat now and then. I was way overzealous with how many cans I bought and ended up bringing quite a few home last year when I packed up all of my materials. I decided to pretend the shaving foam was snow and let Carter play with it, also making tracks with his animals and cars. He loved watching me make it snow as I sprayed it on his kid table. And I was amazed that he was able to nicely play with it without making a mess while I made dinner. I think it was one of those perfect moments that will never again be recreated!
- After reading a book about Groundhog Day and talking about shadows we made some in the hallway. We built towers out of wooden blocks and then Carter shone a flashlight at the blocks to make their shadow on the wall. There are so many activities you could do with shadows. I even saw a book on how to make shadow puppets when we were at the library!
Craft:
- At the end of the week I pulled the cotton balls out of Carter's sensory bin to use for a craft. He dipped the cotton balls in paint to make a picture. He loved it and worked for quite a while on his masterpiece!
Special Snack:
- One night as a treat after dinner I made Carter a snowman out of marshmallows. We still have some of the tubed frosting from Carter's birthday so I used that to hold 3 marshmallows together and then to hold on buttons and eyes. Ty walked by while I was assembling it and said, "Whoa, Carter gets 3 marshmallows?!" I'm not one to ever give him more than one treat, but Carter knew exactly what I was doing. He looked up and exclaimed, "NOman!" as I was putting the marshmallows together. I think he was more excited about it being a snowman than he was about getting a treat. I really hope it snows enough at some point for us to build a real snowman with how much he loves them!
Make Believe:
- As we read Who Am I? Snowy Animals Carter acted out each of the snowy animals. He loved sliding on his belly like a seal and waddling like a penguin. Those were probably his favorites.
- At the end of the week when we were ready to clean up the sensory bin and get it ready for the next theme, we used the shredded paper to pretend it was snowing. I dumped some on Carter's head and then he had a blast dumping it on me and on Harper. When it was all dumped out I showed Carter how to lay in it and make a snow angel. He thought it was hilarious. Then he ran through it over and over. It was almost as much fun as real snow.
 |
| Carter covered in "snow". |
 |
| Making a snow angel. |
- I found the song "5 Little Snowmen" somewhere online, but I just wrote the song down and didn't save the link. I used the snowmen from our earlier activity where Carter matched the colored hats to the snowmen wearing the same color scarf. At the end of the song I would pull away one of the snowmen, just leaving the hat, as the snowman melted. We would count to see how many snowmen were left and continued until all of the snowmen were gone. At the end of the song I asked Carter how many snowmen were left and he said none. The song goes like this:
Five little snowmen fat,
Each with a funny hat.
Out came the sun and melted one.
What a sad thing was that!
Down, down, down. (as the snowman melts away)
 |
| Only 2 snowmen left! |
- I found another song online and unfortunately wrote it down without saving the link because I wasn't thinking. This song I made actions to go with and Carter loved it. It was adorable to watch him do the actions as I sang.
A chubby little snowman (Carter held his arms out in a circle around his belly)
Had a carrot nose; (Carter pointed to his nose)
Along came a rabbit (Carter held his index fingers up by his head to make rabbit ears)
And what do you suppose?
That hungry little bunny
Looking for lunch
Ate the snowman's carrot nose
Nibble, nibble, crunch. (I'd lean in and pretend to eat Carter's nose)
- When Carter and I made snowmen out of our white Play-Doh, I couldn't help myself and pulled up "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman" from Frozen on youtube so we could listen to it as we built our snowmen.
Field Trip/Interactive Experience:
- We enjoyed our Nature's Buddies winter session at the zoo. The day of our program it was definitely winter weather at 19 degrees with the wind chill making it feel like 9 degrees! We enjoyed learning about how animals collect food for winter and why they need plenty of space to live. Carter especially enjoyed watching the sea lion swim, I couldn't believe the cold water didn't bother him at all!
Riding a golf cart at the zoo while clutching a flamingo feather he found.
- After reading the book "Let's Play in the Snow" we went out on a walk and played our own version of "I Spy". Rather than give Carter clues as to what I saw, I told him what I saw and he would look for it and point at it. It would have been so much fun to do this after it snowed and spend part of the time searching for animal tracks in the snow.
- The Mitten by Jan Brett
- Go to Sleep, Groundhog by Judy Cox
- Groundhog Day by Michelle Aki Becker
- Who Am I? Snowy Animals by DK Readers
- I Am Small by Emma Dodd
- The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
- White Snow Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt
- Red Sled by Rita Judge
- Winter Snow by Liesbet Slegers
- Let's Play in the Snow by Sam McBratney
- One Mitten by Kristine O'Connell George
- Straight to the Pole by Kevin O'Malley
- Hibernation Station by Michelle Meadows
- Frozen Noses by Jan Carr
- Ten on the Sled by Kim Norman
- Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner
- Where Is Home, Little Pip? by Karma Wilson
- Snow by Uri Shulevitz
- Snowballs by Lois Ehlert
- The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming
- Snow by Manya Stojic
- Under My Hood I Have a Hat by Karla Kuskin
- Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee
- Mouse's First Snow by Lauren Thompson
- It's Winter by Linda Glaser
- Winter by Cynthia Amoroso
- Animals in Winter by Martha E.H. Rustard
- Gregory's Shadow by Don Freeman
- The Big Snow by Berta and Elmer Hader
- Stranger in the Woods by Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick
- The Snowman by Raymond Briggs
- Mice on Ice by Rebecca and Ed Emberley
- Pip and Squeak by Ian Schoenherr
- Frosty the Snowman by Steve Neslon
No comments:
Post a Comment