'tis the season for...SNOW!

We've only had a frost or two here in Chicago, but that hasn't stopped me from gearing up for my winter theme art projects and therapy activities. 

 

I just made these really cute snowmen with my daughter (thanks, pinterest) and think that I have a few kiddos that are closer to three I may try this with.  It was beyond simple- small powdered doughnuts, leftover candy corn and a little black decorative icing.  Clean up was really easy, too!  The original recipe called for mini chocolate chips for the eyes and mouths but I had a tube of black decorative icing in my pantry we used instead. 

 

Another favorite winter project for me is cotton ball snowmen.  I've been making these with my therapy kiddos for years.  I typically use just have the kids make circles with the glue and squeeze lots of glue in the middle to fill the circles in, stick on the cotton balls, add a little pipe cleaner nose and draw the arms.  I've also had the kids draw circles to form a snowman on contact paper, cut the circles out and then stuck the cotton balls onto the sticky side of the contact paper.  It's less messy than glue and you don't have to wait for it to dry to hang it up.  The contact paper method usually requires more hand over hand assistance (for the cutting, mostly) and can take a little longer.  This activity is excellent for fine motor practice, of course, by I also love it for sensory play, color identification and even building frustration tolerance (hey, cutting is hard work for most of my early intervention friends). 

 

One of my favorite winter  books to use in therapy sessions is Karen Katz's Toes, Ears & Nose.  It has children that are dressed for the cold weather.  Each cold weather article of clothing is a flap that lifts up to show the body part the clothing protects.  The text will say "Inside my mittens, I've got..." and then you lift the mitten flap to expose the fingers and it finishes the sentence with "fingers."  I love that it does this because it allows for what my friend and colleague Claire calls the "hesitate and hold," which is is verbally setting the child up to answer a familiar question.  It encourages expressive language that is built into a familiar routine. *  I also love that this book teaches the functions of clothing like mittens, hats, coats.  Object function/associative skills can be a difficult  to master and I like to reinforce them any way I can.  In a child who isn't ready for these kinds of skills, you can target vocabulary building.  In my neck of the woods, winter clothing is very functional vocabulary! 




*Hesitate and Hold is a  great trick that you can use in seemingly limitless ways.  I also like to use it  while knocking down towers, too.  You say "KA-BOOM" and knock over a tower a few times.  Then you knock over the tower, say "KA!" and freeze, allowing the child to say "BOOM!"

My Go To Baby Shower Gift

 

As someone with a huge family who works with kids, I've been invited to many, many, baby showers.  I pride myself on being an Ivy League gift giver and am always racking my brain for the perfect shower gift. A few years ago I started giving what has now become my go to gift- a basket of developmentally appropriate baby toys.  Since I specialize in play, giving toys is a must have for me! 

Each basket varies a little depending on my budget and who the basket is for.  This particular basket was for a mom who wanted more environmentally friendly baby gear (less plastic, a few hand me downs, more wooden toys).  It contained:

• Fabric Skip Hop Mirror.  Baby mirrors are a must have.  Babies love to look at faces and smiling at one's own reflection is an important social and communication milestone.  Mirrors are a great way to entertain babies during tummy time play.  Also, a mirror in front of her car seat was one of the only ways we kept my daughter from screaming at the top of her lungs every single time we took a ride in the car.
• Lamaze My First Fish Bowl I always give some sort of container play toy.  This is one of my favorites, although there are many, many variations.  Babies begin to reach into containers and take things out between 9-11 months and putting objects in follows soon after after.  
• Hand me down baby and a little wooden truck.  Both of these toys facilitate functional play, the beginning of pretending and the understanding of symbols (important for language development as well as cognition).  Some time between 9-12 months, babies start using objects like babies, trucks, cups, etc by function (rolling a car, kissing a doll, drinking from an empty cup).  The doll is a hand me down but came from Target.  It's the circo brand and you can only buy it in stores. It's my all time favorite baby (and I've tried and tested dozens in therapy).  It's just the right size (about 5 inches) for babies and toddlers and it's been a hit with all but one of my little therapy friends.
• Manhattan Toy Skwish I actually prefer the plastic, infantino version of this toy but I substituted the wooden version to honor the wishes of this mama.  These kinds of toys facilitate bilateral coordination (babies have to use both hands to hold it), and oral/tactile exploration of toys.  I also use it to help encourage visually tracking and object permanence.  Most babies find it very interesting and thus are motivated to track it with their eyes as you move it away from them or look for it once you've covered it with a blanket.  Also, the infantino version makes a rattle sound when shake it that you can use to give the baby a clue that it's under the blanket. 
• Rattles.  Okay, so the one I included in this gift is plastic (shh, maybe if we don't tell the recipient, she will be too tired to notice).  This rattle is cheap ($2!), easy to grasp, visually interesting and I have not met a single baby in 5 years that didn't like it.  It's one of my go to therapy toys.  I use it for everything- reaching and grasping, transferring objects from hand to hand, encouraging babies to take it out of a container, encouraging oral exploration.  My other go to rattle is this cage bell rattle.  I also included this Educo wooden rattle, too just to make the mama happy.   
• Please, Baby, Please This is my all time favorite book for toddlers.  The baby gets into all kinds trouble throughout the day that yields the perfect opportunity to yell "no!" while reading.  It also has a ton of illustrations of action words (crying, eating, sleeping, kissing). 

If I didn't have budget constraints, I would have included these toys, too:

• nesting/stacking cups- These help teach an understanding of size. Babies should be able to nest at least 3 by 18 months.
• fabric blocks- Stacking blocks is an important visual motor skill and knocking them over is just fun (not to mention a great time for exclamatory language like "Oh, no!" or "ka- BOOM!"
• shape sorter- This can be used for container play until the baby is old enough to start putting the shapes into the correct holes. 
• O ball- I love this ball. It may even make it into my top ten favorite therapy toys.  When kids are little, it's great for all the same reasons as the skwish toy.  When the baby is a little older (about 13 months) you can use to play roll the ball games and then even later, it's great for older toddlers learning to catch!
• Quack, Quack This is one of my all time favorite books.  The pictures are simple with a high contrast and it teaches animal sounds.