I have gotten a lot of feedback from people telling me how it has helped them to understand what My Obstacle Course is when they see a video clip of what it looks like when I set it up. There is one clip on my website's home page but I thought I would show an example from a different My Obstacle Course we did last January. While the station activities are specific to the skills that Andrew needed to work on at the time, it is my hope that seeing what it looks like will encourage you to set … [Read more...] about Winter Themed My Obstacle Course YouTube Clip
Archives for January 2011
Sight Words
Sight words, also known as Dolch words, are specific words that are most common in reading materials at a certain reading level. They are also referred to as "the words you just have to know." The other day I overheard some parents discussing how they needed to be doing more flash card work with their children to build knowledge of sight words. What struck me was that they both said that it wasn’t going to be fun, they knew their children wouldn’t enjoy it, but they were going to make them so … [Read more...] about Sight Words
Domino Math
If you have been following my posts, you know that one thing I try to do when putting together activities for My Obstacle Courses is use things I already have, whether they are toys, pouches or calendar cutouts. I love it when I look around the house and find something that can help me make developmental and academic skill building fun by using it in a different way. One Christmas, years ago, we received one of those game sets with dice, cards, dominos, chess pieces and wooden circles to be … [Read more...] about Domino Math
Stamping
This is one of Andrew's favorite My Obstacle Course station activities and when I think back to when I taught kindergarten, it was one of their favorite "center" activities as well. There is just something about stamping that children seem to enjoy, perhaps it seems like grown-up activity or is something they rarely get to do. I'm not sure why, but stamps have always been a hit with the children I've worked with. Note: "Centers" are stations that teachers set up and the children rotate … [Read more...] about Stamping
Questioning Skills
Andrew did not speak intelligibly until he was about 6 and to help him get his wants and needs met when around people who didn't understand him, we had scripted some basic questions. He was quite a master at asking the question "Can I have ____?" and once he began speaking so others could understand him, I realized that it was time to start building his questioning skills (*please read my note at the bottom of this post). I thought about how to do this in an interesting way and had to look no … [Read more...] about Questioning Skills
Station Numbers
When I first began brainstorming on how to work with Andrew at home, I envisioned a treasure hunt with clues scattered about. As I got thinking about how to make this work best for both of us, I knew that while the format of a hunt would be fun, I needed something more structured and systematic. I was overwhelmed before I even started thinking about all of the work involved with just coming up with clever ways and clues each time. Too hard! While on a treasure hunt of my own at Michael's … [Read more...] about Station Numbers