With fall comes a change in colors, anticipation for the holidays, outdoor activities, and piles of falling leaves. Using leaves at home is a great way to foster the development of your child’s language skills. With an abundance of leaves of various shapes, sizes, and colors falling, there is endless potential for activities. Your child will enjoy learning about where different leaves come from, why they change colors, and why they fall on the ground. Below are specific language areas and examples of leaf related activities that you can try at home to support development. 

 1. Vocabulary: Playing outside in the leaves is a great way to work on building your child’s vocabulary knowledge. During play, talk about what you are doing and what you see. Repetition is key for children, and the more your child hears the words, the more likely they will be to learn them. Here are some ideas of words that you can use when playing in the leaves:  

• Nouns: Leaf, rake, bag, tree, stick, squirrel, bird, sun, cloud, pile 
• Verbs: Jump, throw, rake, crash, fall, play, rip, stomp, skip 
• Adjectives: Colors, big, little, colorful, crunchy, dry, soft, flat

 2. Pretend Play: Once you’ve picked some of your favorite leaves from outside, bring them home to work on supporting your child’s ability to engage in pretend play. Try using leaves as boats or cars for people, like blankets for baby dolls, or food for animals. You can even try cutting your leaves to resemble food and pretend to be at a restaurant. 

3. Following Directions: You can work on following directions when making any craft you choose with the leaves you’ve collected. A quick google search will lead you to many different options! Some favorites include gluing a leaf onto paper and drawing on the remaining body parts to make a turkey or drawing a lion’s face and using leaves to make its mane. You want to set up the craft so that there are clear steps that your child can complete. Make sure you are giving your child directions for the steps of the craft at a level that they can understand. For younger children, focus on delivering one instruction at a time. It might be helpful to pair this instruction with a picture of what they’re supposed to be doing or by you modeling the step yourself prior to instructing your child. For older children, you can work up to delivering multiple instructions at a time or giving them a written list of the instructions to work on independently. Here are some ideas of simple steps that you can focus on when doing a craft with your child. 

• Collect leaves 
• Cut/crumble the leaves 
• Collect glue
• Put glue on the paper 
• Put leaves on the glue 
• Color a picture on the paper

4. Prepositions: You can use leaves to teach or practice prepositions with your child. When teaching prepositions, model the word while also directing your child’s attention to the leaf’s location. Again, repetition is key! Here are some examples of ways to target prepositions when playing with leaves. 

• On/Off – Tape leaves on different surfaces that your child can take ‘off’ or put ‘on.’ 
• Up/Down – When playing outside in the leaves, throw them ‘up’ in the air and watch them fall ‘down.’ 
• Under – Hide objects ‘under’ the pile for your child to find. 
• Out/In – After making a leaf pile, jump ‘in’ and come ‘out’ of the pile.  
• When your child understands the meaning of different prepositions, you can work on having them practice using them. Hide leaves around the room, and then have your child tell you where the leaves are hiding. 

Air travel is a form of travel in vehicles such as helicopters, hot air balloons, blimps, gliders, hang gliding, parachuting, airplanes, jets, or anything else that can sustain flight. For airplanes, it's all about defying gravity. This blog talks about gravity and it's affect on the vestibular system and gives activities to help a gravitationally insecure child. Gravity is the invisible force that keeps us (and everything else) from flying off the Earth. So when it comes to designing an airplane, it's all about defying this heavy force.  

Our bodies also can have a momentary state of weightlessness during movement that defies gravity. Any movement that brings our feet off the ground, our bodies are exploring space. Our relationship to gravity is our most important sense of security and is linked to our vestibular system. If your child has a fear of swinging, avoids escalators and elevators, and becomes fearful with any change in head position, such as when being tilted backward or upside-down during roughhousing, then he or she may be gravitationally insecure. 

At Home: 

 If your child has gravitational insecurity, take it slow. Try a swing that allows your child's feet to touch the ground, or hold him or her in your lap on a swing so they feel more secure during motion. Try distracting them with play and imagination during challenging activities. Sometimes adding weight, like a weighted backpack, helps a child feel more secure. Allow increased time for new 'scary' activities, and help your child gradually engage activities he/she sees as threatening. 

Exploring gravity with your child through crafts: 

Today, airplanes are an integrated part of our lives. We see them in the sky, we use them to travel, and play! Airplane crafts are super fun for kids to make, but they have the added bonus of playing with them afterward too!  

Experiments that explore gravity for young ones: 

• Defy Gravity – This super cool activity is easy to make with paperclips and magnets. (Buggy and Buddy) 
• Galaxy in a Bottle – The glitter doesn't fall down, but instead rises as it settles. Crazy! (One Little Project) 
• Gravity Splatter Art – What happens when you drop something with paint on it? 
• Exploring Gravity with a Tube – Why does the position of the tube change the speed of the car? (HOAWG) 
• Exploring Gravity with Balance – Learn how to make a craft stick stand upright on a chopstick. (Rookie Parenting) 
• Gravity with a Pendulum – Learn about the forces of motion and gravity by placing paint in swinging pendulum. (Handmade Kids Art) 
• Pool Noodle Gravity Play – Explore gravity and slope by making your own pool noodle marble run. (Little Bins) 

The vestibular system is thought to be the primary organizer of sensory information. With a system that acts as it should, the constant pull of gravity generates a constant sensory flow in which all other sensory inputs are superimposed upon. This system is in charge of reacting to every change in head position and is interdependent on other sensory systems to give us an idea of where our body is in relation to space. Support your little one as they continue to explore the world around them and how their body feels against gravity. 

Creating a craft with your child is a great way to target a variety of skills and end up with an adorable memento! Included are some examples of activities that children of all skill levels can be successful in given the right support. Paint snowflakes by creating a template with tape or coffee filters, allowing kids with all types of abilities to successfully participate.

Areas of Development:

• Communication: Narrate what your child is making. You can label the colors and textures of the supplies paired with high effect to promote engagement. As with worksheets, you can incorporate action and directional words into a narration.
• Fine Motor: While painting, focus on your child’s grasp pattern and use of force. A larger paintbrush handle is easier to grasp and is a great place to start. The use of brushes with a smaller (length and width) handle increases accuracy while increasing precision required to maintain grasp pattern. Presenting your child with a few different options and allowing them to choose helps promote problem-solving and decreases the pressure around the task, making it more enjoyable for all!
• Gross Motor: While engaged in crafts, focus on your child’s posture and positioning while seated at the table. If expanding gross motor development is a priority, you can place items at different places around the room, encouraging your child to scan the room to locate needed tools. They can walk, run, hop, or crawl to gather all of the items needed for the craft, providing some movement prior to engagement in a seated task.
• Social-Emotional: Incorporate turn-taking and cooperative play, where you work with your child to create a masterpiece! Engagement in arts and crafts can be a great way to build frustration tolerance, supporting self-efficacy, and pride in accomplishments even when mistakes are made. Modeling how to solve the problem or how to react when things don’t turn out the way you expected can help build your child’s coping strategies.
• Cognition: Crafts are great multi-step activities that require a specific order to be successful, such as gathering supplies, prepping the activity, and cleaning up afterward. Crafts are a great way to target sequencing, following directions, and maintaining attention to the task at hand.

Upgrade: Make paper snowflakes! Use coffee filters to create a unique pattern, folding the filter in half three times. You can draw patterns on for your child to follow or let them freestyle! Use these as your template when painting, though keep in mind you may need to help your child decrease the amount of paint used, as it can seep under the filter.

Downgrade: Prep the activity for your child, pre-placing the tape on the paper. Your child will be able to make a beautiful craft with a single step of the painting. Encourage your child to help with clean up, using hand over hand assistance to wash out the paintbrush.

Pretend play is an important area within a child’s development. It encourages imagination, peer interactions, and flexibility. At Blue Bird Day, the curriculum incorporates a variety of topics to promote pretend play, one of which is learning about outer space. Each discipline collaborates to ensure fluidity of learning during each rotation during a child’s day. Throughout these different rotations at Blue Bird, we learn and talk about space, create space crafts, and engage in pretend play as astronauts in outer space. 

In occupational therapy (OT) and physical therapy (PT) rotation, children are encouraged to be astronauts in outer space, and engage in a multitude of activities! OTs and PTs collaborate within the same multi-sensory environment to promote motor and sensory development. When exploring the idea of space, OTs may engage a child in tactile play — including slime or foam — and pretend it is from outer space or take a ride on a dynamic piece of equipment (I.e. a swing) as if the child is in a rocket ship flying to the moon! Multiple children may be engaging in tactile play or swinging, which encourages peer interactions and turn-taking during play. Each child may have a different idea of how to play with the tactile activity, which can help promote flexibility.  

Tactile play and swinging can help regulate a child to promote improved ability to participate with PTs for gross motor activities. PTs may engage a child to explore outer space through the use of an obstacle course. A child can pretend to be an astronaut jumping through outer space between planets or maintain single leg balance to launch a stomp rocket into outer space! Different pieces of equipment can be utilized by the PT to promote balance and jumping activities, which helps to promote flexibility, gross motor development, and imagination. Children must also wait and take-turns when engaging in an obstacle course in order to maintain safety. If a child has difficulty jumping or maintaining balance, the appropriate level of assistance is provided, and the PT works to decrease the amount of assistance as the child progresses with each skill.  

OT and PT rotation is one example of how pretend play and collaboration work together to ensure fluidity of learning and skill development. Space is only one example of a topic utilized to promote pretend play with children. Each child is encouraged to utilize their own imagination to expand upon pretend play of astronauts in space and incorporate the idea into each session (rotation or individual), further promoting skill development across a variety of disciplines!  

This week’s lesson plan theme is Science: Colors. Many children love to get messy, use their favorite colors, and be creative while doing science experiments, so why not tie in some of their language goals! Your children may focus on their expressive (how you communicate your wants/needs), receptive (how you understand language) and pragmatic (your social language) language skills.

Here is a fun science color experiment that ties in these language skills:

RAINBOW IN A BAG!

What you will need:

• 1 zip lock bag
• 5 different colored paints
• Tape

Directions:

1. Open the ziplock bag
2. Take turns with your child squeezing the various paints into the bag
3. Close the ziplock bag and seal it with tape
4. Take turns squeezing the bag and mixing the colors
   

5 Ways to tie in your child’s receptive language goals:

1. Have your child help you find the supplies with “Help me find [supply item’s name]”
2. Have your child grab a color for you with “Give me [color].”
3. Have your child follow various 1-step directions such as “Close paint lid,” “Open paint lid,” “Push on bag,” etc.
4. Have your child answer ‘wh’ questions such as “What colors do you see?,” “What color is this?,” “Where is the paint?,” “Whose turn is it?,” etc.
5. Have your child help you clean up while following 1-step directions with embedded concepts such as “Put the red paint in the cabinet,” “Put the tape in the small drawer,” etc.

5 Ways to tie in your child’s expressive language goals:

1. Have your child tell you the names of all of the supplies with “It is..” and point to a supply item.
2. Have your child tell you the names of all the colors with “Tell me what color this is.”
3. Have your child tell you what color they want with “What color do you want?” or helping them with “I want [color]”.
4. Have your child ask you what color you would like with “ Mom/Dad, what color do you want?”
5. Have your child tell you what color they want to make with “I want to make [color].” You can say the phrase first and show them.

5 Ways to tie in your child’s pragmatic language goals:

1. Take turns with your child saying “my turn” and “your turn.”
2. Help them stay engaged with the experiment by having them help you, using an excited voice, and showing them how the experiment works.
3. Have your child talk about how the experiment makes them feel and how they think you might be feeling, while looking at your facial expressions.
4. Have them keep personal space by sitting next to you or across from you when engaging in the experiment together. Help them ask you if they want to sit on your lap.
5. Ask them inferencing or what will happen next questions, throughout the experiment or while mixing colors. Such as “What do you think will happen when all the colors go in the bag?,” “What color do you think red and purple will make?,” etc.

Hope you enjoy making rainbows in a bag while sneaking in some of your child’s language goals! Our friends loved doing this experiment in kindergarten this past year!