I decided to make one for us on a grander scale. I bought a big bin and 30 pounds of pasta in bulk. The kids played with it for over an hour along with a visiting guest. It’s like an indoor sand table, but with less mess. Even when the macaroni gets scattered it is easy to scoop back up and put back in. If you do the activity on a large blanket it is even easier.
It would be easy to incorporate some speech practice too if you’re doing it one-on-one. You can target in, out, up, down, more, big, little, etc. You could also use (bury them and then dig them back out) small dolls or lego figures for mama, dada, baby, and other family members. You could use small animal figures for animal sounds like moo, baa, neigh, etc. If you’re working on colors you can incorporate different color cups and practice your color words. If you’re working on two word phrases it’s even better because you can do mama in, daddy out, uh oh baby, moo up, baa down, etc. Fun and speech all at the same time.
Yeah for PAT. I am a trained PAT for our school district. I don't get to do the visits, but I supervise our awesome preschool teachers who do the visits. What a great program. I love the macaroni fun!
ReplyDeleteI love the PAT program. I think it's an amazing service and our parent educator does a wonderful job. It was Ava failing her annual PAT screening in early December that finally pushed me over the edge into pursuing getting an assessment.
ReplyDeleteThe state budget cutbacks have significantly impacted the PAT program here in Missouri and the program in our district has had to cut the number of annual visits back to only one for kids 3 and up and to 4 for kids 2 and under. (Plus the annual screenings.) It's still a great program though.