Spring Happenings

We have been busy, busy, busy enjoying the nice weather, finding exciting ways to get through Spring Fever in the classroom, and preparing to end the school year.  Here is a peek at a few of the things we have been enjoying.

Reading Outdoors
We have taken some of Reader's Workshop time outdoors to enjoy some fresh air and sunshine.

 

Sorting Tasks:
We have been working on visual sorting tasks where the kids are required to sort various pictures by category.  So far we have been sorting items by Food, Person, or Toy and Winter vs Summer.  It has been much more challenging than I expected, but also helped me to realize that this is a skill we need to spend more time working on!  We are also using categorization as we are beginning to work with coins and the concept of money.  We have been sorting money vs non-money (buttons).  I am preparing them for learning the difference between the four common coins (penny, nickel, dime, quarter) and eventually their values next year.

Mother's Day:
I hope you all enjoyed your child's Mother's Day gift as much as we enjoyed making them together!

Cooking to Learn
There is a cooking curriculum program designed to prepare students with special needs for eventually becoming independent in their own food preparation.  The Cooking to Learn program has several picture directed recipes that guide students through the process of creating an easy food item.  The bonus is we get to talk about measuring (which tools to use to measure liquids vs solids), counting, taking turns helping with each step of the recipe, incorporating speech, and many more functional skills.  We have been making our recipes on Friday afternoons followed by a 10 question comprehension activity (with visuals).

 

Camping Day
For a fun change in routine, we had an entire day with a camping theme.  We followed all of our regular routines, but each of our activities had a camping twist!  Our camping day last school year was a hit, but to keep it exciting I knew we needed something extra special... so, Mr. Bob offered to bring the tent! :)  It was an exciting day filled with lots of smiles and learning.

Piecing together sentence strips with camping vocabulary during Center Time.

Creating a campfire art project - and working on our fine motor skills!

Reading a camping themed book during Reader's Workshop.

Following the Cooking to Learn recipe for s'mores!