cut...snip...

After doing some hand painting, Albert practiced using the scissors. I made some strips of paper with 2-4 inches of lines in them for Albert to cut through. This is similar to what he did on therapy last week.

Mastering the proper holding and use of scissors is a very essential skill to survive in preschool since there's a lot of cutting and pasting activities done in school, plus it helps improve those little hand's fine motor skills for writing.

Book of the Week: Ten Apples Up on Top

Look!

Ten 

apples 

up 

on 

top!

We are not

going to let them drop!

Last week after A's therapy, we went to the bookshop, Powerbooks, here in Manila, and bought several Dr. Seuss books (pictured above), and 3 Adarna Books (shown below).

Adarna book:  Paradise of the Animals

Ako si Kaliwa, Ako si Kanan (I am Left, I am Right)

Papa's house, Mama's house

Little A insisted we also get the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Clubhouse Collection, which has 5 books and one page of  60 assorted stickers (which A gleefully placed on the back cover of one of  the Seus books. Next to Timmy the sheep, Mickey Mouse is his second favorite cartoon character.

That night, I started to read him first his much loved Seuss book, The Foot Book. After reading this  repeatedly seven times (thank goodness the book is very easy to read inspite of its 28 pages, or else I would be out of breath after reading it for the 3rd time), I introduced the next Seuss book on our list, which is Ten Apples Up On Top!. We skimmed first through the pages for pictures to make it interesting to A. 

I opened the first page and has not even started, when A pointed to the picture anxiously saying, "Kawawa sya. Hulog apple, o." . What he means was:  Pitiful lion! Apple fell (on his head). 

One apple up on top!

We then proceeded to count the apples as the story progress (initially there was only one apple, then it became 10 apples). A had fun counting each and every apple on top of the animals' heads. He would oftentimes falter and forgets to include the number 5 on his counting (he says one, two, three, four..six, seven) and I have to gently remind and correct him of this. This book is great for teaching counting, numbers, and of course, rhyming words.

We did only two rounds of reading for this new book (not that I am complaining, my.vocal cords must be singing " Hooray! To bed we must go!")

----------------------------------------------------------
Ten Apples Up On Top
a Dr. Seuss Beginner Book
339 php (US $8.99)


Paradise of the Animals
Virgilio Almario/ Joanne de Leon
an Adarna House book
65 php


Ako si Kaliwa,  Ako si Kanan
Russel Molina/ Ibarra Crisostomo
an Adarna House book
65 php


Papa's House,  Mama's House
Jean Lee Patindol / Mark Ramsel Salvatus III
an Adarna House book
65 php


Mickey Mouse Clubhouse:  Clubhouse Collection
(5 books)
379 php  (US $9.99)

All books are available at Powerbooks bookshop.

--------------------------------------------------------

Powerbooks has an ongoing promo,  just check their website for details. 

www.powerbooks.com.ph

Skills to Learn at Preschool

The other day I asked a preschool teacher, who happens to be a friend, on what skills should a child learn in preschool to be ready for grade school (specifically grade 1). This would greatly help me in guiding A on the direction to go by preparing appropriate and beneficial learning enhanced activities. Her list goes as follows:

- Recognizes and identifies all the alphabets.
- Recognizes and make simple rhyming words.
- Recognizes and can match simple words that begins with the same sound letter  (eg. apple, arrow, alligator)
- Can follow words being read from left to right, top to bottom.
- Can match words spoken with words that are written 
- Can identify basic body parts
- Can tell to relate experinces.
- Can repeat simple informations from a story.
- Can draw or write letters & words to express thoughts or  feelings
- Can write / spell high frequency sight words
- Can write his/her own name
- Recognizes written numbers 1-10.
- Can count the number of objects in a set
- Can write the number symbols of  1 to 10.
- Identifies and can compare (and creates) between two sets in terms of quantity that it contains.
     (eg. set A is more/ less/equal to set B)
- Can estimate quantities. (eg. give me one ball vs. give me all the balls)
- Can more or less do simple addition and subtraction with the use of concrete objects. (you use concrete objects like blocks, coins, toy cars, pebbles, apples or any fruits, cut out shapes, etc.)
- Can measure object's length (or weight) and can compare two objects in terms of their length. (eg. tall vs. short; heavy vs. light, wide vs. narrow, big vs.small)
- Can identify, draw, and describe basic shapes: circle, square, triangle, rectangle (eg. a triangle has 3 sides; a square has 4 equal sides)
- Knows how to use a scissors for cutting and following lines.
- Can follow simple one directional instructions. (eg. get that ball)
- Can follow two directional instructions. (eg. get that ball and and put it on the table)

There might be some other things she missed according to her like social, practical, more fine motor, and gross motor skills. It would be best to check the child developmental milestones and include them to the list.

I see now that most of the activities done during A's therapies are based on what's on this list. Now that I have I guide, it will be easier to create activities to supplement A's learning and therapy.

Thank you teacher!

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Therapy Updates

My son is doing good in his O.T. sessions. Much improvement were always noted weekly  and we are happy with his progress. He now can sit to do table activities, likes to be read to especially at bedtime,  can talk in simple phrases, and follow simple one-direction commands.

For Gross Motor:
  - Jumping on trampoline.
  - Obstacle course:
         - walking on balance beam. Walks in tandem on the beam but not with heel to heel pattern.
         - kneel walking on the mat; jumping forward 5x on mats
         - Did good to match oreo cookie complex shapes matching after verbal & physical prompts
  - Jumped fairly well on wavy path and stumbling occassionally.

For patterns, relationships, spatial:
  - Did a 7 piece form board puzzle and able to recognize and name one of the items in the puzzle.
  - Did 3-6 pc. interlocking puzzle, but therapist has to hand him one piece at a time.
  - Did a 9 pc. interlocking puzzle well.
  - Finished a star mosaic; worked continuously with minimal prompts until finished.
  - Able to imitate 4 spool pattern (color pattern) upon demonstration by the therapist.

For fine motor:
   - Colored a 10 inch 2 part drawing. Initially needed much prodding to use the up-down strokes in coloring,
      and when filling up the white spaces with color.

 
-   Then the next session he was able to color a 3 part drawing and filled it 100%  with color without deviations (or lampas).

 - Colored another 3 part drawing and traced his name.

- Able to copy vertical and horizontal lines.
- Able to accurately trace and imitate drawing of circle.
- Able to trace squares accurately with prompts to follow the left to right, top to bottom sequence.

- Fairly able to imitate an action song.
- Able to exhibit good fine motor control and bilateral asymmetric coordination of the hands when he scooped  with no spillage macaroni shells using a spoon.

- Able to correctly match & identify simple pictures of ball, ice cream, telephone, apple, boat, butterfly.


For the last session:
  -  He can say aloud to name and point parts of the face correctly.
  - Able to imitate & copy a 6 block bridge pattern with moderate prompting.
  - During free play, he was hesitant to take the slide with 2 other kids present.