Fall placemats

Motor skills targeted: Bilateral hand use and strengthening with tearing pieces of construction paper, use of shredded scissors for scissor skills, tactile sensory input with sticky paper.

Communication skills targeted: Following directions, receptive matching of functional objects to pictures, answering basic wh-questions, expressive vocabulary of functional items through verbalization or sign language

Today in group we worked on two separate tasks:

1. The motor activity for the day was creating fall placemats using scissors or tearing paper with hands. Once the paper was ripped, students placed it between two pieces of contact paper to make a fall placemat.

2. The communication activity for today was receptive matching of objects to pictures along with expressive naming of items. We recently purchased the Functional Language Program for Children from Linguisystems. It provides activities for children who need to work on expressive, receptive and functional language skills at the one, two, three and four word phrase level. There was a CD included, which we used to print and laminate the picture cards. We are hoping to use this program for both verbal students and students using sign language in order to increase and expand their language skills. Since this was the first time using it, today we gave two pictures to each student (some needed assitance in keeping the cards on the table in front of them). Then we pulled an object out of the box. The students had to look at their cards to see who had the match. The student then either spoke or signed the label of the picture. It was sometimes difficult for the students to attend while waiting for their item to be selected but overall, the students did well with the activity.