It’s the first week of Summer at The REC and we are all about gardening this week! Check out some of the things we have been doing at the center to go along with our How Does Your Garden Grow theme:
Sensory Friendly Garden Bin
We used the following to make it:
- Goya Black Beans for dirt (or you can use coffee beans)
- Squishy Watermelon (can be found in the Target dollar section)
- Plastic play carrots and strawberries
- Plastic garden tools (found in the Target beach section)
- Cardboard seed starter pots
Skills we work on:
- Counting
- 1 to 1 correspondence
- Color ID
- Object ID
- Scooping
- Pouring
- Grasping small objects
Sensory Friendly Florist Shop
We used the following to make it:
- The signs used for this Flower Shop pretend play center are from Play To Learn Preschool (found at teacherspayteachers.com)
- All of the flowers are silk and can be found at the Dollar Store
- The plastic plant pots were found on Amazon and our local grocery store
- The toy phone and cash register we had available to us here at The REC
Skills we work on:
Our students can choose whether they want to be a manager, florist, gardener, cashier, customer or delivery driver.
We have a toy car and wagon available for deliveries across our center.
In this center we are working on initiating with our friends across the center. For example the cashier may say: “Hello, how can I help you?” The delivery person may say: “Here is your delivery from ___ sent to you from The REC Flower Shop. Have a nice day!”
In this center we are working on initiating with our friends across the center. For example the cashier may say: “Hello, how can I help you?” The delivery person may say: “Here is your delivery from ___ sent to you from The REC Flower Shop. Have a nice day!”
The Florist works on tacting (labeling) colors, manding (requesting) specific colors or flower types to arrange in a bouquet, counting out flowers, Fine motor skills of wrapping a bouquet in tissue paper and tying the bouquet with a ribbon. The florist collecting phone orders or greeting customers at the window will work on writing by writing down the order on the customer’s receipt.
The gardener works on taking care of the flowers, practicing pouring and watering the flowers with a watering can.
The manager may organize the flowers in the shop making patterns with colors or flower types in the vases (Ex: sunflower, rose, sunflower, rose), sorting by color/ type as well.
The customer works on manding requesting specific flowers/ arrangements, intraverbal responding, giving gifts to others, math/money skills (giving the accurate amount of money for the product).
Both the customers and the florist can add personal touches to their flower arrangements by making special occasion cards for whoever is receiving the floral gift!
These are just a few of the many skills we have been working on in our Flower Shop Center this week!
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