Heading into Summer

Welcome back to the SPOT Time Collaborative.

Happy Winter!

This month is all about winter and what we wear in the snow.  Many of our activities are inspired by Shirley Neizel's Book: The Jacket I Wear in the Snow.

There is a lot of opportunities for children to use their vocabulary of clothing, body awareness, and sequencing in this great story.  If you look online, there are many activities you can try at home as well.  

On Boardmaker Share, you can find supports like the ones we use at school: http://www.boardmakershare.com/Activity/699742/jacket-i-wear-in-the-snow

The author's website also has some great activities that might inspire you: http://www.shirleyneitzel.com/activities.htm

But you can also have fun with what is in your drawers and closets.  Let your child explore, make choices of what they might wear: Do you want the blue shirt or  the red one?  Do you want the jeans or the sweatpants?  They can help separate laundry, finding socks that are the same or different.  Or just play dress up.  Most of all, have fun and enjoy this winter season.  

What will November bring?

In honor of Thanksgiving, the theme for the month with be food.  We will expanding vocabulary and concepts with fun food activities.  We will be working on categorization, identification, matching and sequencing all month long.  We will build strength, coordination and attention with fine and gross motor activities.  The children will learn some singing silly songs and discover what kinds of foods SPOT likes to eat.

Remember, there are quite a few days off from school this month.
November 9, 10 for Parent/Teacher conferences
November 11 for Veteran's Day
November 24 and 25 for Thanksgiving Break.

Halloween Celebration

While we celebrate Halloween this week in SpOT, we will also be incorporating some fun activities, songs, and games that target are language and occupational therapy goals. We will be reinforcing fall and Halloween vocabulary while using tag bags (special bags that have various clasps for little hands to practice opening and closing) to discover pictures hidden inside. Sequencing and simple body parts will be practiced as the students make paper jack-o-lanterns. We look forward to another great week of SpOT and hope everyone is enjoying the nice fall weather!

Fall Fun

As all the changes of fall are happening, it is a great time to take some nature walks and talk with your child about everything they see. So bundle up, grab a paper bag, and collect some leaves! Collect all kinds of leaves and comment on and compare the different leaves. Use basic concept words like "big" and "small", comparative words "small, smaller, smallest", talk about the different colors, and comment on the different shapes of leaves. When you are done, find your favorites and do a leaf rubbing and hang it on the fridge...that way you don't need to keep all those leaves in your house.

Check your Backpack

Just like Dora's magical backpack, our own childrens' backpacks hold valuable tools that will foster a good school-to-home connections. School work, teacher/therapist notes, and school information is passed to you through your child's backpack. Make a habit of checking your student's back pack every day, and discussing teachers' notes and schoolwork. This is a valuable tool to finding out what your child is doing in school, if they have a worksheet or art project about bugs, odds are they are discussing bugs at school. And remember, this goes both ways, you can always send notes to school through the backpack to keep teachers updated on your child.

Back to School Month

The kids are slowly making their way to understanding routines and expectations of school.  This month in SPOT, we will be supporting that with language, music, movement and other activities.

We will be introducing the children to Spot, our mascot (stuffed animal) through a fun movement story about how he goes to school.  Basic concepts like stop/go will be incorporated using fun song, rhymes and activities.  Fine motor play and other prewriting skills will be incorporated with Tag Bags, fun fasteners tasks, playful worksheets completed in different ways and many other fun activities.

To help your child cope with the new routine, remember to encourage a healthy and consistent sleep pattern.  Try to get your child to go to bed around the same time each night so that he or she is ready to explore and play.  If you create your own special routine, your child will know what to expect and lessen anxiety.