Keeping Your Child Busy During the Month of March

    Putting Therapy Into Practice

Find a time everyday to look out the window and look at the weather with your child.  Discuss what the weather was like yesterday, and what the weather is like today.  Compare/contrast the weather on the two days (Yesterday was sunny and warm but today it is sunny and cold).

Monthly Activity

Mud Playdough

Make edible playdough with your child using this recipe:

2 C flour
2 C warm water
1 C salt
2 TBS vegetable oil
1 TBS cream of tartar

Combine all ingredients and stir over low heat, mixing frequently.  Watch for the dough to begin to thicken and clump in the center. Once the dough is thick and not gooey, take it out of the pot and place on a cookie tray. Knead the dough until it’s smooth. At this point, pick your choice of brown dye (cocoa powder, food coloring, cinnamon). Now you can store the dough in an airtight container or do the following activities: 

• Create a mud pond and put bath toys in the muddy pond (animal noises, animal indentification, sorting, part-whole relationships).
• Make a footprint or handprint and have your child use a stick to write their name. Then cut out the print and leave it out to dry.
• Use verbs to talk about what you’re doing with the dough: rolling/pushing/cutting.
• Use descriptives to talk about how the dough feels: smooth, squishy, cold.

Ginny’s Recommended Game

I love the Hedbanz game because it can be used for semantic language (categories, describing skills, vocabulary), syntax (question and sentence formulation), as well as motor speech skills. To work on describing skills, take turns using organized language to describe the pictured objects so that the person “wearing it” can make a good guess.