I read the book That's Not My Bear available from APH. After we finished reading the book, my student made her own book. I showed her four bears made of different textures. She chose the one she liked and that became "her" bear. We placed this bear on the page that said "That's my bear," then she chose which bear she wanted to put on the cover and the other pages of her book.
Our department recently hosted an ECC (Expanded Core Curriculum) Open House. I worked with two other teachers on the area of Sensory Efficiency.
We decided to base our display on the book Rosie's Walk. We developed sensory activities that could be used with the book. We matched the activities to the pages in the book.
Each element of the picture was outlined with a different tactile. The barn was outlined with a pipe cleaner. The fox was outlined with hot glue. The hen was outlined with Wikki Stix.
The pond was a silver bowl of water with light up ducks. The larger ducks were found at the dollar store.
The fence was created with a cardboard box surrounded by a sheet of brown poster board. We placed a tactile matching activity behind the fence.
I filled 12 yellow plastic eggs to make 6 pairs of matching sounds. The eggs were placed in yellow "hay." When the student matches two eggs they are placed in the egg carton.
This light box activity was easy to create. I used foam "bees" and glitter in yellow colored hair gel.
We included a "taste test" with a data collection sheet. The students had to mark the chart under the color jelly bean that they thought was the sweetest. We made this more difficult by using sour jelly beans.
Sensory activities can be used with many children's books.
I used St. Patrick’s Day as my theme this month. My son helped to write the book Five Little Leprechauns using Boardmaker. I mixed glitter in with green paint, and used green peppers to stamp clover onto white paper. We explored the green peppers before we used them to stamp. The students touched and smelled the peppers. If you would like a copy of the book, you can download it from here. Print it out, laminate, and bind
