My Obstacle Course: Engage, Encourage and Empower

A fun, structured, systematic way to work on your child's strengths and weaknesses at home!

Literacy

Building Letter Recognition – Sensory Bin Letter Hunt

I recently received a letter asking about activities to work on beginning letter identification and uppercase/lowercase matching. As with any concept I work on with Andrew, I begin by providing him with very basic activities and build according to what he needs. This is one of my favorite ways to approach this and lots of other skills.

Note: Remember that these station activities are not meant to be long, drawn out projects that take all afternoon for your child to complete. They have short attention spans which is why doing stations that are quick and to the point work so well.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Sensory Bin Letter Hunt

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Sensory Bin Letter Hunt

For this station activity I would choose some letters, either strategically if I knew he was struggling with them or randomly.

The letters I chose for this particular hunt.

I have used magnet letters, Scrabble or Bananagram letters, wooden letters from a Melissa and Doug game or letter tiles I found at Michael’s.

Magnet letters, wooden Melissa and Doug letters, colored letter tiles from Michael's and Bananagram (or Scrabble) letters

I combined these with a sensory bean bin that I have made. (Now that summer is approaching, it might be fun to go with the summer theme and make a sensory bin with sand! Just remember to put a towel or sheet underneath it for easy clean-up.)

Place the letters in the sensory bin and bury them.

I include a sheet with the letters on it so they can be matched up and so that he knows how many more he needs to find. This does not have to be fancy, just a sheet of paper with the letters neatly written on it or even printed from the computer using a large font size.

Now that the set up is complete (super simple huh!!), it’s time to start digging!

Dig around until a letter appears.
Take the letter out...
and place it on the sheet.
Continue until they have all been found!
What it would look like matching uppercase and lowercase letters.

If your child knows their letters, an extension of this would be to place letters into the bin that form a word. Write the word on a piece of paper or a piece of a sentence strip and the child can put the letters in the correct order to form the word.

It really doesn’t take much to make a fun activity to help your child build letter recognition skills.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

Cool Tool – Reading Guide

On one of my recent visits to the teacher store, I was in the literacy aisle and noticed that they had these colored reading guides.

Reading Guides by Ashley Inc.

These are a great tool to help children focus on what they are reading, really making the words stand out and reducing the amount of background distraction.

This small reading guide highlights single lines of text.
The reading guide blocks lines of text above and below.
This big reading guide highlights paragraphs.

They come in lots of different colors which may make it a bit more fun and motivating for a struggling readers.

I do realize this is not a totally new concept, someone just took an old idea and made it better! This tool just goes one step further than rulers, bookmarks or construction paper strips, by blocking out the lines above and below the line they are reading. I would always use bookmarks under lines of text that I was reading, especially when the material that was new or challenging. As a teacher, I would have my students use rulers, bookmarks or strip of colored construction paper, underneath the lines that they were reading to keep their place and help them focus. Wish I had these back then!!

If your child struggles with reading, this tool could help! If you don’t have a teacher supply store nearby and are interested in this, here is a link to the reading guides on Amazon.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Giant Alphabet Beads For Lacing

I was looking for ways to help Andrew build the fine motor skills and motor planning necessary when lacing or stringing something together. I tried all sorts of things – the lacing boards, which did not interest him at all because he truly did not care if the holes around a picture had a lace around it. He did not see the purpose in that at all. I tried lacing boards that required him to lace together two separate pieces, an animal and it’s home. That was a little more motivating for him but he quickly lost interest once he could tell that they were attached after just one or two “stitches.”

Lacing beads to make a certain pattern using a pipe cleaner worked better…

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Lace the beads to make the same pattern.
My Obstacle Course Station Activity Completed

but then I hit the jackpot for him…

Alphabet Beads

giant alphabet beads to make words! He loves making words and this was something he found purposeful and worth his time and energy. I found these letter cubes at Lakeshore learning supply store (click here for the link). He has to string the letters in the right order on the lace to form words. For him, this was awesome and the lacing or stringing became secondary to creating words.

Working to make the word "cookie" since we had just read a Frog and Toad story about cookies.
He's doing it!
Check out the attention and focus!

I chose words that went along with the theme and often mixed up the letters and gave him a written clue to make it more fun.

If At First I Don’t Succeed, I Try, Try And Try Again!

This was another one of those lessons that taught me to never give up! Sometimes I have to approach a certain concept or skill a number of different ways before I find something that clicks with him. There are those of you out there who may start with the letter beads and find that your child is really motivated by the lacing cards – I know I loved those as a child! The important thing I have learned is to think about what my child likes, what motivates him and then I try to find ways to engage him using that knowledge. Not everything in life is going to be perfectly tailored to what he likes to do and how he likes to do it but when I am working with him at home to build the skills and concepts he is ready for, I have the benefit of providing activities for him so he understands and learns in the way that is most beneficial to him. You can do the same!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

April Memory Match Games

This month I have two different memory match games to share, one using butterfly stickers and the other with Easter themed stickers.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Memory Match Game or Find the Same

Spring Butterfly Themed Memory Match Game:

I like to use calendar cutouts or colored index cards cut in half…

Umbrella Shaped Calendar Cutouts (April Showers)

and thematic stickers. Place matching stickers on two separate cutouts or cards.

Sheet of butterfly stickers that I used.

(The butterfly memory match is one of the more difficult ones we have done because he really has to pay attention to the details of the butterflies to distinguish between them.)

Set them out face down and that’s it!

Note: When we first began doing this game, I placed the cards face up and we played “Find the Same” to work on finding matching pairs. This helped him with visual discrimination and also gave him an introduction to what we were going to be doing once the cards were turned over.

Memory Match Game Set Up
Matching pair found!
Matching pair up close.

Easter Themed Memory Match Game:

Memory Match Game with Easter Stickers
Matching pair!

Note: There are tons of different kinds of stickers out there so if you don’t celebrate the holidays I am sharing about or if you have a child who is really into something, like vehicles or sports, you can substitute those kinds of stickers and make a game that will be appropriate for your family and motivating for your child.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

Find Baby Butterfly

This is an adaptation of a game that I used with my students when I taught kindergarten. It was called “Where’s Uncle Ugboo?” and it was basically a hide and seek game using construction paper umbrellas with letters of the alphabet on them and a small picture of Uncle Ugboo that I would “hide” under an umbrella. We would go around and the students had to identify the letter before they could lift it to see if he was under the umbrella. If they found him, they got to hide him the next time. They loved it and it was a fun way to practice letter identification.

I decided to try it with Andrew and was so excited because I realized how simple this was to make with cutouts or index cards and also the whole idea that I was not limited to just doing letters. I could make the game so it was building on whatever concepts he was ready for, including (but not limited to) numbers, words, colors, shapes, emotions, thematic vocabulary words (think science and social studies vocabulary!), etc.

I used some large butterfly cutouts, wrote or drew what I wanted him to identify and then set them out at one of My Obstacle Course stations. (Note: When making this game, I recommend using something thicker than paper like calendar cutouts or index cards so that they cannot see the baby butterfly underneath.)

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Find Baby Butterfly

Letter Identification:

Letter Identification Game Set Up
Baby Butterfly

I placed a small butterfly cutout (the baby butterfly) underneath one of the larger ones. That is it for set up!

Hiding Baby Butterfly

When playing this game, he has to identify whatever is on the butterfly or card before he can lift it up to see if the baby butterfly is underneath.

Lifting the cutout to see if it's there!

Numbers:

Multiples Of 7 Game Set Up

Baby butterfly is hiding under the number 14

Sight Words or Vocabulary Words:

Sight Word Game Set Up
Hiding under the word "know"

You can also modify it so that there are a few baby butterflies hidden or you could play it a few times if they find it right away. Super simple, fun and helps build skills. I love activities that incorporate all of those things!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Practicing Speech Sounds

Most speech pathologists will send home practice pages with words that have the target sound for the child to work on.  If they do not, contact them and let them know that you would like to reinforce what they are doing and would like to stay current on the sounds your child needs to practice. This is particularly helpful if they receive services while they are at school and you are not able to speak with the pathologist each time. Andrew receives his speech therapy after school so I am there and ask his speech pathologist what we should be working on or  I look at the homework paper he gets for practice. While I do not use the homework sheet as she does while working with him, I do take the words and/or sounds and turn them into more of a game.

I Need To Help My Child Practice Skills But They Don’t Want To Work With Me!

One of the reasons I came up with My Obstacle Course is that he didn’t want to work with me and I know I am not alone in this because I hear it ALL of the time. We would come home from our speech session armed with a sheet of pictures that had the sound he was working on and we were expected to practice this.  I don’t know about you, but in my house it looked and felt as though I was trying to wrangle an octopus into a sleeping bag. He wriggled, he yelled, he ran around the room, he would spin things all while I looked for ways to bribe him. Ah, bribery. Then one day I had enough and thought, “This is miserable! There has to be another way!!” And there was…by turning it into a game or station activity played within My Obstacle Course. This helped tremendously because it was part of a larger structure, it had a beginning and an end and he knew what was expected.  It also helped because while I made the activities, it wasn’t coming from me, it was just part of the Obstacle Course.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Speech Sound/Word Practice Game

 

Match the word with its clue and then say the word 5 times.

Station set up:

 

Make up word clues to go with the speech words or sounds that your child is working on and write them on calendar cutouts or index cards. Place them on the easel under a magnet. (This can also be done on the floor by setting out the clues and having the words in a container.) Write the speech words on cutouts or index cards.  That’s all! Piece of cake. You could also provide a mirror for them if it is helpful for them to see what their mouth is supposed to be doing. (click here for a previous post on using mirrors)

At the station:

Read the clue and find the word that goes with it.  Say the word 5 or 10 times.

What it looks like in our house:

Clues for words with the /air/ and /ear/ sounds, like "chair, care, share" and "hear, deer, tear, clear."
Word matched up with its clue.
Clues for words beginning with /ch/.
Here are the /ch/ words that he was working on.

I really like doing this on the magnetic easel because it is also working on fine motor skills and planning because he has to hold the clue, lift the magnet and slide the word underneath so they are all held on to the surface with the magnet.

It does not take long to make this activity but it makes it so much more fun for both of us to reinforce his speech pathologist.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!