How To Make Butter

Did you know that you can make your own butter?  And that it is SUPER SIMPLE?  I didn't either...  I had the honor of working with an amazing group of speech pathologists while at an elementary school and "how to make butter" was just one of the many, many things they taught me to do.  Almost every year, we made butter with our students and it was always a fun activity that had the potential to address many speech and language goals. 

If you're looking for a way to get your little ones involved in the Thanksgiving Day dinner preparations then you may want to consider making butter!  Here's what you'll need:

Heavy cream

Salt

Container with a lid

Marble

With the help of your little one, pour some heavy cream in the container.  Next, add a pinch of salt.  Drop in your marble.  Close your container tightly...  And for the best part... Shake it!  The longer, the better!  Once the mixture thickens, your butter is ready.  It's really that simple!  And such a great thing to make with your little one because it's simple, not messy, and gets them moving!

Cooking activities always provide a great opportunity to address speech and language skills.  NAMING the ingredients, SEQUENCING the instructions, and RECALLING how you made the butter, all make this a language rich experience for your little one.  It will also give him/her a sense of pride when your homemade butter is being passed around the dinner table.

We'll be bringing our butter to Thanksgiving dinner and I hope you will be too!

Love & Language,

Marisa

Turkey Hand Family

There's nothing sweeter than a handprint craft and I think handprint turkeys are the cutest!  This year we started what I hope to be a new tradition and had our entire family of 5 make a handprint turkey.  The boys were extra motivated since daddy was doing it too!  Buddy and Mikey helped paint our hands - brown for the palm and thumb and red, green, orange and yellow for each finger.  It started a great talk about COLORS again as well as naming each finger (thumb, pointer, middle, ring, pinkie) - expanding on BODY PART VOCABULARY. 

This is a sweet song that goes along with finger play and gives you a chance to think of some other foods you eat on Thanksgiving.  Naming things that belong in a CATEGORY (such as Thanksgiving Dinner Foods) is a great way to improve your little one's speech and language skills and is appropriate for all ages!

Sung to the tune of "Where Is Thumbkin?"

We eat turkey we eat turkey Yum, yum, yum Yum, yum, yum Always on Thanksgiving Always on Thanksgiving Yum, yum, yum Yum, yum, yum (Add other foods we eat at Thanksgiving)

Hope this turkey craft makes a sweet addition to your Thanksgiving celebrations!

Love & Language,

Marisa

Feather Letters

 

 

 

 Can't believe it's the holiday season!  I am looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas even more this year now that the boys are a little older and understanding more and more of what this time of year is all about!  Thanksgiving I think is a favorite amongst most because it focuses on family and food, and if you're lucky an after dinner nap!  There's a lot less preparation for everyone (except if you're the one hosting!) than with Christmas.  I am attempting to get a lot of my Christmas to do list finished before December 1st so that I can better enjoy the month and all the things we have planned in it.  So far, so good!  Couldn't let Thanksgiving pass without sharing some experiences that you can enjoy with your little one to celebrate!

This is a simple craft that can open the door to explore many different language concepts with your little ones.  You'll need

Construction paper

Marker

Glue

Feathers

I did the prep work by writing each of the boys' first initials very large on a piece of construction paper.  If your child is older than you could even have him/her write the letter.  Sometimes rather than asking the boys if they want to do a craft or activity, I just set it all up at our work space and wait for them to find it and ask to do it themselves.  This was one of those times.  When they took the bait, we talked about what LETTERS our names began with.  Buddy (4) is working on SOUNDS and LETTERS in preschool so that matched up perfectly for him and Mikey (2) is starting to recognize letters and we've been doing our best to encourage that!  Although my Mighty (1) is way too young for letters, I made sure he joined us to feel part of our group and be exposed to our speech and language development.  I made a letter for him also so that he would have something to show his daddy when he got home too!

I had the boys trace their letters with their fingers as best as they could and we tried writing them in the air with our fingers as well.  After that, it was time to get gluing.  I gave them each a bowl full of feathers and had them trace their letters with the glue and then place the feathers on top.  Feathers alone (although messy I will admit) can lead the way to lots of language!!!  We talked about what they FELT like (soft), what you could DO WITH THEM (tickle, write, maybe even paint???!!  hmmm...), what COLOR they were, and HOW MANY we would use to trace our letter.  I gave Mighty a bowl of feathers to just play with and explore.  The end result was very pretty for such a simple craft!

Hope you get a chance to try this one our with your little ones before TURKEY DAY!

Love & Language,

Marisa