Celebrating Dr. Seuss: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

 

 

Here’s another activity in celebration of dear Dr. Seuss! 

We read the book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  As a speech language pathologist, I love this book because it is filled with lots and lots of language concepts – colors, sizes, shapes, feelings!!!!  Another great thing about Dr. Seuss books is that the rhyming patterns are appealing to children of all ages (even little Matthew sat with us for this one).

There are lots of activities to go along with this story, but we chose to make the one that leaves us with dessert!  I really find cooking activities to be one of the easiest and most practical ways to work on your child’s language skills.  There is so much to talk about when you’re cooking and baking – colors, labeling foods and kitchen items, action words (like mix and pour), etc.  Little ones love to help so it’s usually easy to engage them – and you have to cook anyway (sometimes)!  From simple meals, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, to fancy cupcake baking!  My son Anthony has always helped in the kitchen.  He’s gotten to the point where he can even crack eggs all by himself.  It’s something we have always enjoyed doing together and now Michael has been getting into it as well (I think sampling the food is his favorite part though!).  Back to the dessert… Here’s what you need:

 

Blue gelatin mix

Measuring cup

Bowl

Colored fish candy

Clear bowls or cups

Water

Super simple!  Just follow the instructions on the box to make jello, pour the mixture into clear bowls, then add your colored fish candy!  Refrigerate and you’ll have a special dessert to eat while you’re re-reading this Dr. Seuss story!

POUR IN THE JELLO MIX.

MIX IT, MIX IT, MIX IT ALL AROUND!!!

 

POUR THE WATER INTO THE FISH BOWLS.

 

ADD ONE FISH, TWO FISH, RED FISH, BLUE FISH!

 

Tying a book to an experience gives even more meaning to the language you’re encouraging.  While you’re making your jello, talk about your FAVORITE FISH in the book.  You can PRETEND and ACT OUT parts of the book with your candy fish.  Talk about the different COLORS and SIZES of the fish.  COUNT as you drop the fish into the water.  Later when you’re eating your jello treat, RECALL how you made it – what did you USE and what STEPS did you follow? 

Hope you enjoy this super simple activity... Dr. Seuss' birthday is only 2 days away!  How about a little green eggs and ham for breakfast that day...

 

Love & Language,

Marisa

Speech and Language Development Checklist: Birth – 3 Years Old

 

Speech and language development begins long before your little one says his/her first word.  The first three years of life is the most intense time for acquiring speech and language skills.  Although, children tend to vary in their speech and language development, just as in other areas of development, they follow a natural progression of language acquisition.  These milestones can be helpful in determining whether or not your child is developing normally or may benefit from speech and language therapy.  It is important that if you suspect your child is not meeting these milestones that you contact a local agency where your child can be evaluated by a speech language pathologist and also have his/her hearing tested by an audiologist.

 

 

Birth - 3 Months Old

·         Smiles

·         Responds to your voice

·         Makes sounds to show pleasure (cooing noises start around 3 months)

·         Watches your face when you speak

·         Enjoys playing with people and may cry when playing stops (2-3 months)

4 – 7 Months Old

·         Looks toward sounds

·         Notices loud noises

·         Laughs and chuckles

·         Notices toys that make sound

·         Makes noises for pleasure and displeasure

·         Imitates some movements and facial expressions

·         Makes sounds similar to speech sounds, including  m, p, b

8-12 Months Old

·         Responds to simple verbal requests (ex: Come here)

·         Responds to “no”

·         Makes simple gestures (ex: shaking head, waving)

·         Babbles with inflection

·         Babbles “dada” and “mama”

·         Babbles both long and short groups of sounds

·         Says “dada” and “mama” for specific person (11-12 months)

·         Uses exclamations (ex: UH-OH)

·         Repeats sounds or gestures for attention

·         Enjoys games like peek-a-boo and patty cake

·         Recognizes words for common objects (ex: bottle, dog)

12-24 Months Old

·         Follows simple commands

·         Understands simple questions

·         Listens and attends to simple stories and rhymes

·         Says several single words (15-18 months)

·         Says more words every month

·         Points to pictures in a book when named

·         Puts two words together (18-24 months)

·         Points to a few body parts when asked

·         Begins make believe play (20-24 months)

·         Repeats words heard in conversation

24-36 Months Old

·         Understands difference in meaning

·         Follows two step commands (ex: Get your car and put it in the toy box)

·         Listens and enjoys hearing stories for longer periods of time

·         Has a word for almost everything

·         Talks about things and asks questions using 2-3 words

·         Speech is understood by familiar listeners

·         Can say name, age and sex

·         Uses pronouns

·         Can express a wide range of emotions

 

 

Celebrating Dr. Seuss: Making OOBLECK!

 

March 2^nd is Dr. Seuss’ Birthday!!!  So, this week we’re getting out our favorite Dr. Seuss books to celebrate!

 

A great Dr. Seuss book that has a super fun activity to go with it is Bartholomew and the Oobleck.  This story and activity is sure to be lots of fun for children and adults of all ages!  The book itself is quite lengthy so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to read to my little ones.  Instead, I told them a summary of the story myself while drawing pictures on their chalkboard.  This was a fun variation of the usual stories we read from books.  Both boys loved listening to the story and had me retell it over and over again!  Anthony then started telling his own stories.  Telling stories (called “narratives” in the speech and language world) is an important part of language development.  Take time to encourage your children to tell stories about things that have actually happened but also to make up tales on their own.  

So here’s my very shortened version of Bartholomew and the Oobleck….  If you have a copy of the book you can show the pictures from the story as you go along.  This is a story about a king, a village boy, magicians, sticky, gooey oobleck that falls from the sky, and the power of three special words, “I am sorry.”  Once upon a time there was a man named King Darwin.  King Darwin decided that he was tired of the four things that fell from the sky – rain, snow, sun, and fog.  He wanted to make a new kind of weather.  Bartholomew Cubbins, a boy who lived in the village, came to the castle and begged the king not to create something new that fell from the sky, but King Darwin refused to listen!  King Darwin called on his magicians to cast a spell!  The magicians uttered one word… oobleck.  “What is oobleck?,” the king asked.  The magicians replied, “Won’t look like rain, won’t look like snow, won’t look like fog, that’s all we know.  We can’t say anymore.  We’ve never made oobleck before.”  The magicians went back to their cave and worked all night.  When the king awoke in the morning, he looked out his window and saw big, gooey, green globs falling from the sky!  King Darwin was so pleased by this exciting new stuff falling from the sky.  Bartholomew Cubbins was not!  He ran around the village telling everyone to stay inside!  He ran to the bell ringer, but the bell wouldn’t ring because the oobleck was stuck to it!  He ran to the trumpeter but he couldn’t blow his trumpet because there was oobleck stuck inside!  The big blobs of oobleck start breaking the palace – there are messes inside and outside!  Bartholomew goes to find the magicians to reverse the spell but their cave is covered in oobleck as well!  Bartholomew returns to the castle where he finds the king stuck to this throne!  Together, King Darwin and Bartholomew try all different magic words to stop the oobleck, but nothing seems to work!  Finally, exhausted, the king says, “This is all my fault! I AM SORRY!”  Those three words, “I AM SORRY,” turn out to be just the magic words they need because the oobleck starts melting away until it is completely gone!  Sometimes saying, “I am sorry,” can make even the biggest problems go away.

Now as I said, this is a very shortened version of the story and unfortunately, this retell doesn’t have the brilliant rhythm and rhyme that Dr. Seuss books have, but it’s still a cool story and the boys loved it!

Now it was time for us to be the magicians and use our spell to make OOBLECK!  Here’s what you need:

 

Bowl

Cornstarch

Water

Green food coloring

Spoon

I highly recommended putting a tablecloth or some kind of plastic covering under your work space because this can get very messy!

We took out our magic wands (a pencil and a drumstick) and were ready to use our magic.  Put 1 ½ cups of cornstarch in the bowl.  In a separate cup mix 1 cup of water with a few drops of green food coloring.  Pour the green liquid into the bowl and mix it together.  Use your magic wands and say what the magicians said,

“Won’t look like rain,

Won’t look like snow,

Won’t look like fog,

That’s all we know. 

We can’t say anymore. 

We’ve never made oobleck before.” 

 

 

 

 

The substance is very hard to mix and will seem solid, but once you get it all mixed together, pick some of it up with your hands.  You will find that it feels hard but then melts in your hand and spreads out.  That’s because oobleck has properties of both a solid and a liquid.  Yup, a science experiment!  The consistency all has to do with how much pressure is applied.  I promise that even you will be amazed by the feel of oobleck.  I even had to save it for Hubby to feel when he got home.  When I worked at the school, all of my students loved making oobleck.  They always begged to make it again and again! 

I was very curious to see how the boys would react to touching the oobleck.  As I suspected, they were at first very resistant to touching it.  It sticks to your hands and can be hard to manipulate, but once they got into it, they loved it!  This is a total sensory experience, which means there is a tone to talk about! What does is FEEL like, what does it SMELL like?  Have you ever FELT something like this before?  We let it ooze through our fingers and spread out on the table.  We rolled it in our hands to make a ball and then made our hands flat and watched it EXPAND.  I was surprised at how Michael reacted to it.  He usually doesn’t like anything sticking to his hands but he loved playing with it!  Keep in mind the oobleck is not edible so keep an extra eye out!  It was fun to talk about the story and RECALLING DETAILS as we played with the oobleck. 

 

The lesson in the story should also not go unmentioned.  We talked about how saying, “I AM SORRY,” when we have done something wrong is super important!  Our friends like when we apologize and it can make them feel better!  These lessons are important for the social aspect of language development.

Hope you get a chance to try out this oobleck experiment yourself!  More Dr. Seuss activities to come this week!

For more information on Dr. Seuss, his books, free printables , activities, and games, visit:

www.seussville.com

Love & Language,

Marisa

 

Paint Your Snow!

 

It was finally a good day for us to go outside and actually play in all this snow we've been having.  The sun was shining!  I actually had to de-layer after being out there for a little while.  We were all very happy to get some fresh air! 

We threw some snowballs and played on the snow-covered slide.  We made a fort with these really cool brick molds that my mother-in-law bought the boys for Christmas - the snow was perfect to pack and they actually stayed together when we turned the mold over.

 

 

My good friend used spray bottles filled with water and paint to let her twins color the snow (great idea!), but our spray bottles are hard for Michael to push so we tried paint and paint brushes instead!  We used washable finger paint because I knew it wouldn't stain our concrete patio.  Michael, who had already gone in the house (not a big fan of the snow) even wanted to come back out and paint the snow with us, hence his pajama pants!  We used GREEN first since we decided we missed seeing the grass so much!  We talked a lot about how DIFFERENT our backyard looked covered in snow and all the things we could do when there was snow on the ground and all the things we could do outside in the warmer months.  We talked some more about the kinds of clothes we wear in the backyard during different SEASONS.  Putting things into categories like this - THINGS WE DO IN THE WINTER vs. THINGS WE DO IN THE SUMMER; CLOTHES WE WEAR IN THE WINTER vs. CLOTHES WE WEAR IN THE SUMMER is a great language activity.  So many language skills are tied to the ability to categorize information.

 



We took out some BLUE paint next.  When we were all done we SCOOPED up the snow and TOSSED it out into the yard.  It was cool to see the colors spread out all over the place.  ONE, TWO, THREE... THROW!!!

Even my little Matthew got a chance to go outside today!

This activity was super simple and we finally enjoyed this snow we've been complaining so much about!

Love & Language,

Marisa