3. Book: Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley
I was introduced to this book in undergrad (at Truman State!). It was a huge hit with the preschool kids. It is such a fun book--each page "builds" a new part onto the monster, and then each part is taken away as the reader tells the monster to "GO AWAY!" Potential goals to target: artic-/g/ is repeated, body parts, colors. Sample text:
"GO AWAY, scraggly purple hair!"
"GO AWAY, two little squiggly ears!"
......
"And DON'T COME BACK...until I say so!"
(and a bonus sample: "But, YOU DON'T SCARE ME!" and, the Lincoln version, since it is his favorite line in the book: "NO NO SCARE ME!")
4. Therapy Tool: The Egg Game
This is a great use for the dozens of plastic eggs you might end up after attending your neighborhood Easter egg hunt, the city Easter egg hunt, and your church Easter egg hunt with your 2 year old. Lincoln is a hardcore egg hunter. If you aren't crazy egg hunt enthusiasts like us, then you can buy bags of plastic eggs for about a dollar around Easter time. You will need a dozen plastic eggs and an empty egg carton.
You can fill the eggs with just about any item you can find. Potential targets: insects, colors, letters...basically any vocabulary target the child might be working on that you can find it in miniature! I have found mini farm animals and jungle animals at the dollar store. Lincoln really likes putting his micro machines in them, too.
When I used this game in therapy, the kids always got so excited. I'm not sure if it was the anticipation of finding out what was in the eggs or what, but no matter how many times we played it, it never seemed to get old! We always shook the egg first, then tried to predict what we would find inside. It was also good problem solving to figure out how to open the eggs...sometimes those things are stubborn!
5. Therapy Tool: foam window stickers
For this game, all you need is a window (or a mirror would work, too), a shallow dish of water, and some sheets of thin art foam (found in the craft department in most stores...). Potential therapy targets: colors, vocabulary, directional prepositions ("put the square under the star"), multistep directions ("Find the star and the circle and put them at the bottom of the window"). For Lincoln, we cut out simple shapes (star, square, circle, etc.). He also requested I cut out a sphinx, but unfortunately mama's art skillzzz are a bit lacking so instead he got a triangle with a circle on top. It's pretty much the same thing. Instead of cutting out the shapes, you could always cut out a bunch of squares or circles and just draw a picture of your target word on the shape in permanent marker. To stick the foam shapes to the window or mirror, just dip them in water and press them to the window. The kids think it's magic!
There may or may not be a part 3 coming up...not making any promises :)
