O is For Olives – Eating Our Way Through the ABCs

In these days of sensory awareness, I’ve noticed that one medium for learning and sensory experience we often overlook is our taste buds.

Did you know that O tastes salty (olives), and sweet (oranges, Oreos), and mushy (oatmeal) and spicy (onions)?

We worked a bit with food last week while studying the letter O, and we had great fun with olives.

A pretty simple supply list – wooden skewer, styrofoam bowl or Play-Doh, can of whole black olives, and a can of whole Manzanilla (green) olives.

Bella HATES olives, so she wasn’t having any of her taste buds tantalized with these, but I got Noah to at least lick one of the black olives.  He wasn’t too impressed, but he was happy to play with them.  Olives do have a unique feel to them, slick and wet and easy to crush.  We turned this session into patterning practice.

Just take a wooden skewer and poke it through an overturned styrofoam bowl (or you can stick it in a clump of Play-Doh).  Then start the pattern off by skewering a green olive followed by a black one and have your child continue the pattern.  Change this up with more difficult patterns if your child seems ready.

Ah love this (said in my best Southern drawl)!  (Get it – olive this)?

Pergo, Painter’s Tape and a Plan

Oh, actually this was on my vinyl kitchen floor, not Pergo.

Anyway. . .

I recently saw a more complicated version of this activity on Pinterest.  I simplified it into a spiral maze and used a black marker to ink the letters in alphabetical order on the tape.  If you do this, be sure to change the direction of the letters after every new angle so that they will be facing the right direction as your child follows the tape.  Show your child how to drive on the tape – he’ll get it right away.  I also had the children walk the tape and say the letters as they stepped on them.

Don’t forget to get your tape up after 10 days or so and use painter’s tape, NOT masking tape.  Otherwise you’ll have a much harder time.

U-Tube Videos for Education – Shapes

My friends, after an entire 12 months of blogging, I have FINALLY figured out that I too can put video directly on my WordPress blog.  To celebrate, I have some You-tube videos for you that Noah (6 with Down syndrome) and I watched last week.  Just click on the arrow in the center of each screen shot. Short descriptions of each video are below the screen shot. If you’d like to view the video in full screen, click on the rectanglular box in the bottom right corner of the screen shot. Enjoy!

A catchy rap-type song with simple PEC-type graphics for each shape.

More shapes to a Beatle-ish tune with pictures made out of shapes.

A mellow, dreamy song with simple cartoon shapes that morph. The video and lyrics highlight the number and placement of sides each shape has.

A run-down of the 2-D shapes to a rap/soul beat. This video also points out things in our environment that are examples of shapes. The number of sides of each shape are highlighted and counted.

A Sesame Street-ish video and song pointing out shapes in our environment. Nicely done with shapes being outlined in highlighting.

You can find all these videos and more ideas for working with shapes on my Shaping Up Pinterest Board: http://pinterest.com/mamajoyx9/shaping-up-preschool/.

Related articles

• The 9 Most Popular Viral Videos Of The Week (huffingtonpost.com)
• Using U-Tube Videos to Teach Numbers (wordsofhisheart.wordpress.com)