Jake's Journey with Apraxia

We are having amazing fall weather and I am soaking in every minute of it. Here are a couple of things that have helped Jake get in the spirit of Halloween …

Teach Preschool Blog – “Ppppp is for pumpkin painting, pouring, pounding, and play dough play”

While Jake enjoyed painting this pumpkin, he LOVED “pounding” Daddy’s golf tees into it with a hammer. We got the pumpkin on Saturday from the grocery store and it stayed on the kitchen table all weekend. The boys would walk by the finished product throughout the day, take the tees out, and then do it all over again.

I was going to skip the play dough portion of the activity, but I showed Jake the web site pictures before we began and he wouldn’t let me forget about this part. For extra reinforcement of the /p/ sound, we put a play dough penguin on the pumpkin. Thank you Teach Preschool for a great and super easy Halloween activity that all of us busy mamas can pull off!

Last week I received the order I placed with Scholastic Books and Jake also enjoyed the “Add ‘Em Up Pumpkins” game/activity. When we first opened it, I will admit, these little pumpkins were chucked across the living room a few times, but on Tuesday Lil’ Man enjoyed counting all of the pumpkins and then doing basic addition problems with them. 

Also from Scholastic, I ordered the book The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams. This was the special monthly book for $1.00. What a deal! Also, did you know you can order the $1 book each month from Scholastic without ordering anything else? What a great way to build up your child’s library!

Jake enjoyed this book and he especially got a kick out of the following props I used to make the story come to life: shoes, pants, shirt, gloves, hat, and a trick-or-treat jack-o-lantern. I also loved the story telling ideas and activities that Playing with Words 365 posted here.

I have been trying to casually incorporate sequencing activities into Jake’s weekly learning activities and this book is a perfect resource. Simply read the story and then ask your child what the lady saw first, second, and so on. To reiterate this concept, click here to print out a cut and paste activity for your child to do. Thanks again to Playing with Words 365 for a great idea. This is what the finished product looked like, which is now proudly displayed on our refrigerator …

I’ve got my eye on a couple of more projects I’d like to do before Halloween. I tried to dress Jake up like a scarecrow this week (click here to see the beautiful blog post inspiration), but he wasn’t going for it. There’s still time though, so I’m going to give it one more shot.  And I would like to do the “Paper Bag Scarecrow Craft” by All Kids Network because it looks pretty easy and the scarecrow theme would go great with the book mentioned above. I’d like to read that story a few more times before Halloween Eve.