Today we continued with our fairy tale story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Becca and I completed a task on comparing and contrasting biggest to smallest. We used a worksheet that consisted of Becca pointing to each individual picture identifying the biggest and smallest picture. The worksheet went along with Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Becca had to identify the smallest to biggest bowl of porridge, beds, bears, and chairs from the story. There were 6 different picture boxes and Becca got 5 out of the 6 picture boxes correct the first time through. After, Becca and I watched an educational video on the story and then completed a picture card recall task about the story. During the morning news, Becca and I discussed the fast passes for her family Disney Trip. She used positive eye contact during our conversation and was very verbal. Becca seems very excited about meeting Mickey! After snack, Becca and I completed an emergent reader on "Pete the Cat: Wheels on the Bus." In addition, Becca and I sang the song the wheels on the bus adding hand motions to the song. She completed an activity that involved sorting picture cards under the correct column consisting of -at and -an. For example, I would show Becca a picture of a can and ask her what the picture was. She would respond with "can" and I would ask her if can sounds like at or an. She would respond and then I would assist her in glueing the picture card under the correct column. Becca and I started a reader called "Where is the Cow?" This reader incorporates directions consisting of behind, under, on top, inside, and next to. For example, "The farmer looked under the barn." The reader comes with a farmer on a popsicle stick and as I read the story Becca repeats the direction and shows me the direction with the farmer piece. In addition, Becca explored some stories on Starfall Learn to Read. Finally, Becca and I painted a picture frame and I was very impressed with Becca's painting techniques. She would dip the brush into paint and paint the wooden frame in a swirl position making sure she did not leave any side unpainted. She really enjoyed this activity and sat through this task for over 30 mins. She did a great job today and we got a lot of work done!
Becca and I spent this time together getting to know each other. We practiced identifying letters and sounds visually and verbally. In addition, Becca and I looked at rhyming word cards and when given two options she was able to pick out the word that rhymes. For example, I would ask Becca" Does mat rhyme with rat or boy?" Then, Becca and I read a book about animals where she would point to the animal for example "The Sheep" as I would read the story. In addition, she would recite the sound that specific animal makes. Finally, Becca and I read her favorite story "Mickey's Birthday."
Becca was in a great mood today! She was energetic, very verbal, and full of laughter. We started our morning with a coloring activity sheet, which represented the letter b for bear, butterflies, ball, and balloons. I colored a balloon as a model for Becca to color the rest of balloons and for her to practice coloring in the lines. I would tell Becca "Let's color the balloons, not the entire paper." After the coloring activity, we discussed the letter b and the sound b makes. I showed Becca a few pictures that began with the letter b, such as bat, bike, and box and asked her to tell me what the pictures were. Then, I showed Becca a few pictures that did not begin with the letter b, such as rug, man, and pot. I asked Becca to name what each picture was and asked her if the word began with the b sound. For our morning news I asked Becca about her birthday this weekend. I asked Becca how old she was and she responded six years old. I asked Becca if she had cake for her birthday and she responded Yes. I asked Becca if she had chocolate or vanilla cake and she responded with chocolate cake. I was not sure what kind of cake she actually had but I thought it was still important to have our morning news discussion. After snack, Becca and I read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Then, we read an emergent reader of the story and did a picture card recall. Finally, Becca and I watched an educational video of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which she loved it so much she wanted to watch it over and over! In between tasks Becca and I would take breaks and if she completed a task I would reward her with a short phonics video. This seemed to work very well. Becca and I reviewed the story of the Three Little Pigs and Becca recited parts of the story for example I would say "Little Pig Little Pig let me in" and Becca would respond "Not by the hair of my chiny chin chin." We had a wonderful morning and I am very excited to continue working with Becca!
Today we enjoyed the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle”. We colored and assembled an emergent reader of the story and then watched an animated version of the story. We then used “Hey Diddle Diddle” themed worksheets to practice patterns and differences. She completed all 5 patterns correctly! Then she was able to identify the difference in looking at 1 of 4 pictures on 2 of 5 attempts. This shows some progress. Later in the morning we continued the story with “Goodnight Moon” and then we created craft stick puppets to reenact the “Hey Diddle Diddle” rhyme. Becca had a great time replaying the story and having the cow jump over the moon! We worked on rhyming words by building words in the –et and –en word families. We also matched rhyming pictures. We read some of our favorite books today. Becca enjoyed celebrating her birthday with her schoolmates and joined the older girls in singing “Let it Go” in Spanish.
It was another great day! Becca really seemed to enjoy the group activities for spring today. We joined three other girls for crafts and fun. First, she painted five plastic eggs. She worked so hard at painting the entire egg. We will keep these in the classroom a while to use for counting activities to go with our Counting Eggs reader. Next, Becca made a little chick. We traced her hands for wings. Becca worked hard at tearing the tissue paper, then balling it up, and then pushing it on to the glue area of the paper. She worked very hard at filling all of the white space. We took a break for snack. We then listened to a cute story about a white rabbit named "Hopper". Next, we made a basket (or we called it a "pocket" as it was similar to those we made for our abc animal pockets) out of paper plates. We then went on to the playground to hunt for eggs containing jelly beans. Becca had a good time finding the eggs and putting them into her pocket. Finally, we ended the group activities by painting a wooden picture frame. Again, she worked very hard to paint all of the surfaces of the frame. Miss Kristal joined us in our room and we read "Goodnight Moon" and sang our spaceship song for her before Nancy arrived.
Behavior: Becca's behavior was terrific and appropriate today. She greeted and interacted with the other children and staff. She initiated a great deal of spontaneous speech and asked questions. She needed some assistance during activity transitions.
Potty: I spoke to Nancy regarding if Becca uses the potty with the door open or not at home. (I know it's very common in the home with young children to have the door open.) The bathrooms in our school are more like "home" than traditional public bathrooms in appearance. After one of the activities, several of the girls were washing their hands in the bathroom with the door open. I guess Becca decided she needed to go and began to pull down her pants while the girls were still in there with the door open. I stopped her and hurried the girls along. I spoke with Becca about waiting until the door is closed and no others are there, etc. I suggested to Nancy it might be a good idea to start practicing closing the door to form a good habit. We talk our way through it every time that we go to the bathroom here. I even have her turning on the light, closing the door, and opening the door, etc. She is doing all of the actions with verbal cueing. (She has tried to go before without closing the door.). We could try using the term "privacy" along with closing the door and see if that helps establish the pattern.
Becca was in a great mood again today! We started the morning reading her Princess ABC book. We then reviewed our Solar System/ Space activities with readers, our songs, picture cards, and blasting off the rocket. Becca is helping more with our spaceship song and is filling in some of the words. We then completed an activity in which she had to sort pictures into "planets" and "not planets". She scored 5/8 on this activity (saying "yes" that all pictures were planets), however remembered the moon was not a planet. We found the initial starting letter (in print) from three choices for our space words. We also completed a picture in which we added six stars in the sky. We then counted them and put the written numeral on the page. Becca helped count a few of the numbers. Becca did a great job getting her picture taken and we had time to change her clothes before going on the playground. Miss Kristal observed us during our snack time routine and for the following activities. We watched the animated "Goodnight Moon" and reviewed the matching cards. This time Becca initiated the matching of the pictures. We tried several times to find the different cards and Becca found a few this time.
Becca seems to be in a period of growing language! Over the past two days, she has been initiating utterances spontaneously and asking for things she needs. Additionally, she has been repeating more phrases I have said to her in non-instructional tasks.
Becca was energetic, laughing, and very verbal with a great deal of spontaneous language when I greeted her this morning. We performed a parallel coloring activity in a book she brought from Nana. I colored the page on the left, discussing what I was doing. Becca colored the page on the right and we discussed colors and what she was doing. She chose the picture of the horse on the carousel and we named the horse "Buttercup". We then reviewed our Solar System/ Space activities with readers, our songs, and blasting off the rocket. Becca named the space cards today and we worked on expanding them from one word to two word responses. We read the rhyming book "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown. We worked on finding two matching pictures from the story in a practice field of 8. Becca did a good job finding the match, but had trouble initiating the activity. She needed me to choose a card first and then she’d find the match (the cards were presented face up). Using a field of only three cards, we then worked on finding "which one was is different" and "which one doesn't belong"? This is still a very challenging task. We worked on finding the starting letter of each picture with three choices using pictures from the story. In this activity Becca then had to find the letter in print, not just produce the sound. She did very well. We also watched an animated version of the story. We read our "Three Little Pigs" reader. We then looked at a picture template of a brick house and then used nine pieces of the same picture to rebuild the house (complete a puzzle). We then performed the pre-writing practice to help the piggies get home. She did one of three independently with no modeling!! Hooray! We continue to do this in the page protector with the dry erase marker. She likes this activity, so will hopefully produce more favorable results in tracing activities. We performed motor / language activities with Becca writing on the chalk wall. We drew circles, smiley faces, and a horse that we named "Buttercup" from our earlier activity. We talked about the features of the horse like body parts, tail, mane, etc. We also completed a rhyming picture sort of words ending with –an and –og as well as explored some stories on Starfall Learn to Read. We discussed the morning news of her trip to see animals and to the park.
Potty: Becca was showing behaviors that she needed to go for quite some time. Despite asking her many times, she denied needing to go. She has not been asking to go to the bathroom lately. I have been reminding her to ask and particularly pointing out that she will earn treasure chest if she does. Finally, it was apparent that she really needed to go. I stopped her activity and said, “Becca, you need to go the bathroom.” In this situation, I gave her a statement vs. a question. She just looked at me. I instructed her to ask and modeled for her “Miss Debbi, I need to go potty.” She repeated me and jumped up for the door. I was so delighted to not only get a “see you tomorrow”, but I also got a goodbye hug, too.
Today we continued with our space theme. We reviewed our planets poster and listened to The Planet Song. We reviewed our space picture cards and Becca was able to hand me the ones I asked for and repeat the names. We looked at pictures of astronauts and stars on the Internet. We then colored an Emergent Reader called "I Know About Stars". This booklet asks and answers simple questions about stars to share facts. We sang our spaceship song from yesterday several times. Becca does not know the words but was humming some. We had fun counting "3-2-1 Blast Off!" In keeping with s for space, we watched the s-video on Starfall. We then did in initial discrimination worksheet in which we had to determine if the items started with s or not and then trace upper and lowercase s. Becca said "yes" to all of them but when I questioned her about the incorrect words, she could tell me what letter was needed to start them. We then watched "Spring" on RAZ Kids and it only took two viewings for Becca to tell me three items she saw in the story that go with spring. We practiced some cutting (she was only closing scissors) and performed some other fine motor tasks. I offered Becca some free choice drawing time on the whiteboard and she surprised me by saying "help piggies home", in which she was asking to do the pre-writing practice worksheet to help the piggies go home. We also helped the rocket get to the moon with a zigzag and curved line. We watched the "Hooked on Phonics" O song video, which shared some CVC o word families. We then did an auditory discrimination activity with -op and -ot picture cards. Becca then helps me read the words back. She also made some CVC -og and -ot words as well as watched some short o stories on Starfall Learn to Read. We worked with our rhyming cards on -og and -at today. Becca got about half of them correct. We read Richard Scarry’s version of “The Three Little Pigs” and finished coloring our “The Brick House is (color word)” and Becca helped read through the book.
Morning Report: In an open conversation about where Becca went yesterday, she could not tell me that she went to the carousel. After asking if she go to ride something yesterday she did respond “carousel”. I asked her why she got to go and she responded with some cueing. When I asked her what color horse she rode, she responded “black”. We worked on sitting and looking at each other during our conversation.
Potty: Becca got quite fidgety and was holding herself. She denied needing to go to the bathroom, but it was apparent that she really needed to go, so I took her. She said "treasure box" as she went and I reminded her that she needs to tell us that she needs to go to earn treasure box.
Morning news report: I asked Becca if she went anywhere after school yesterday. She did not respond. I asked her if she went to the Dr. and she said “yes”. Here is an account of our exchange:
Debbi: Did you get stickers? / Becca: Yes. / Debbi: Did you get anything else? / Becca: Lollipop / Debbi: Did you get something that spins? / Becca: Pinwheel /Debbi: What color is it? / Becca: Red / Debbi: Did you let Noah play with it? / Becca: No (and wouldn’t explain why not). It was a good start to the activity and we will work on her sitting and engaging more in the interaction as she kept getting up. Today we started off with a painting activity. Becca and I discussed what she was painting (mostly flowers) and we discussed items that are each color that she was painting. We continued on our space theme and looked through picture cards of space vocabulary such as: astronaut, helmet, rocket, moon buggy, gloves, and moon. We then made a rocket of paper and tissue paper. We counted down 3-2-1 to blast off! We sang a song to the tune of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" called "Climb Aboard the Spaceship" which ends with the 3-2-1 blast off! We traced Rr and rocket. Becca did a great job with a shadow picture matching activity today. One picture was colored and one was a shadow of the same figure. She did a great job finding the matches. We attempted the same pre-writing activity today as yesterday. I first modeled with task with verbal instructions. We then performed he task hand-over-hand and then Becca attempted independently. It took her a while to do one of three correctly. Becca was asking or rhyming words today. (I love work requests!). We completed an -ag and -am picture word sort. The -ag words were a little tough. On Starfall Learn to Read Becca fell in love with the short i vowel story "Fish and Me". She also worked in the short i letter factory. We completed a little note work on our brick house color word emergent reader. I noticed Becca was started to grab the sides the chair as if she were on the potty. I rushed her to the bathroom and she did have a bowel movement (she did not ask to go and denied needing to go). It seemed of large size so Becca indicated she was done and we pulled up pants and washed hands. All of a sudden she said "again, again" and I got her back on the potty. She worked and worked for about 15 more minutes, continuing to go. (It did not seem to be diarrhea, which I know was a problem earlier in the week.) We greeted Nancy, who was just arriving, back at the classroom with the good news.
Today after a meeting with school administration and Becca’s parents regarding Becca’s current status and staff transitioning, Becca and I started with a lowercase alphabet discrimination worksheet. We looked at lowercase b, d, p, and q, all of which are similar in form, and sorted them into the appropriate columns. Becca did confuse some of them (as is common) and would benefit from repeating this activity down the road. We worked on a find the match (two identical of five pictures) activity. After first asking Becca to find the match, which was not successful, I did identify the first picture for her and then asked her to find the second. She required max cueing with this task. Ironically, Becca chose to watch one of the Starfall Learn to Read stories that I had showed her parents in the meeting as one that she typically seems not to like. Well, sure enough, today she loved it and requested a second viewing! This story focused on short vowel e words. We completed a pre-writing practice sheet, this time helping the piggy follow a straight line diagonally upward to get the supplies to build his house. We practiced with hand-over-hand assistance multiple times and then Becca was encouraged to try on her own. She did TWO of the three correctly by herself! We used the peg board today work on pre-math in making patterns. Becca helped me complete two of three AB patterns presented. We then used the pegs as a free play activity for motor strengthening and language. We made tall towers to make a castle for Mickey, Princess Minnie, and Donald. Becca decided it would be a big blue castle and for some reason Goofy wasn’t invited to live there. Nearing the end of our day, Becca was pausing and posturing as if she needed to make a bowel movement. We did go to the bathroom twice to try letting this happen on the potty. The second time, I was able to distract her with conversation about Disney characters and princesses, etc. yielding more sitting and trying time. She unfortunately did not go.
