Group Meeting February 2014

PRETEND PLAY campaign with 5 components:

1a. Enjoy and celebrate all those moments when Liam is truly CONNECTED to you.

1b. Lengthen his attention span in one activity.

1c. Strengthen his receptive language.

1d. Strengthen his mimicking skills.

1e. Inspire Liam’s commenting and sharing opinions.

+ using the iPad for opinions and feelings + complicating the academics topics or play topics.

Ideas from Megan:

1.       For Liam’s interest in the colors of our clothes:  We could play with his pillow pets/stuffed animals and his shirts. Like playing dress up but with real T-shirts and pillow pets and stuffed animals.

2.       For Liam’s interest in emotions:

a.       Making sentences with cards and words and fill-in-the-blank activities:

“When Martalicia comes to play, I feel ______________________”

“When my transportation book breaks, I feel ________________”

“I am __________________ when I heard Dusya scream.”

“I feel __________________ when I jump on the trampoline.”

b.      Charades/Guessing game. The emotion cards go in a bag. You take a card out and he needs to guess the emotion. Eventually, he will take a card and you will guess the emotion.

c.       Keeping the emotion cards at hand to be used when playing any pretend-play scenario, like birthday party, zoo, cooking, etc. What emotions can we associate with parties, field trips, activities, etc?

d.      Dumb yourself down and practice situations like this with pretend play or with books: “Liam, I can’t figure this out. Dora looks sad, why is she sad? ______” or “Liam, I can’t figure this out. Dora’s ice cream fell on the floor. What do you think Dora is feeling? Dora looks ___________.”

e.      I have been asking him “how do you feel?” or “what are you feeling?” or “how are you doing?” Different responses he has given me are:  grumpy, excited, silly, happy, “scared and grumpy”. One time he said “grumpy”, I asked: why are you grumpy? He said: “scratch” and started to scratch himself. Another time he said “happy”, I asked: why are you happy? And he said: “laughing.” Let’s continue with why questions in the context of emotions.

3.       New/Renewed interests of Liam: Days of the Week  + Clocks and Time + Planets + Bones in the body

a.       We could make up a days of the week song saying things we do each day.

b.      We could play a matching game with days and activities, or with days in English and Spanish.

c.       We could pretend activities for each day or times of the day (wake up ….. bed time).

d.      With clocks he is reading the “o’clock” times. We could expand from there.  (+Clock books)

e.      We could “Fly” to different planets and have a different activity in each planet

f.        Simon Says games using different parts/bones of the body.

g.       Calendar with magnets