Saturday, August 11, 2012

Preparing

Yesterday, I spent the majority of my afternoon packing up my "library." I have so many children's books that it's getting a little ridiculous. Here's my solution:

1. Get a hold of some boxes that are relatively the same size. My boxes were all used for copier paper at my father's office. My mother usually grabs the empty boxes that are set out for recycling (lol). They hold a surprising amount of books.
2. Put all of one type of book together...could be by theme, author, etc. Make sure you write down the books that you put in the boxes so you have a running list.
3. If you have animated literacy books, I would keep those items together in separate boxes.
4. Use a sharpie to label the boxes.
5. Take to school and organize the boxes in your closet. (I'm praying that I actually get access to the one in my room this year so I have a place to put all of these books!)



I picked up this little guy today for .99 cents at Goodwill. Mine doesn't have the overalls, but I can probably figure out something for him to wear. I love using If You Give a Mouse a Cookie for therapy and now I can really bring it to life. He will go well with my random collection of puppets and Dr. Seuss stuffed animals. 


I also picked up this game for 1.99 during my brief venture out. I have several students with sentence formulation goals. This game has two levels: 1) you fill in parts of a pre-formed sentence using the tiles 2) You make up your own sentence using the tiles using different parts of speech.


You could make up your own tiles using note cards cut into small squares. I would use a poster board with a grid (one side blank and the other partially filled) as the game board.

2 comments:

  1. I'll be start my CF this year and I have "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" and used the book for some therapy ideas in grad school. I was just wondering what are some of the therapy activities you like to do with the story.

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    Replies
    1. What I use this book for the most is sequencing of events and predicting what he'll want next. I also ask them what they would ask for if they were the mouse. It's a great book to work on the /k/ sound too.
      I usually stop every three pages and ask my students what has happened so far while I flip back to the images. I may ask what the mouse does with the item and why he did that. I've also seen teachers use a sequencing wheel with this story and have the students give her the item as they work through the wheel. The stuffed animal allows me to do something similar as I can have them give him the items to make the sequence really come to life. Some groups do better with manipulative objects than others so it's not an activity that I do with every group.
      You may even try role-playing the story or creating a similar one. There's tons of great things to do and you can read some other ideas here: http://www.talkingkids.org/2011/07/books-for-language-development-if-you.html?m=1

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