I thought I'd go through some of the activities I'm doing with Ezra during Tot School so that if anyone else is trying to teach an internationally adopted toddler or special needs child it might help with ideas. Disclaimer: I am not an expert (oh my goodness, I am SO not an expert!) Every child is different and that's why it has been so challenging to find ideas. Ezra doesn't fit into the mold.
As intentional as I was with early learning with Liam, it is nothing compared to how I have to get into this little one's mind. Just when I think a game/activity is basic and where he's at, surprise, it's not. This has been great for me to learn. It's been good to really just break things down to the simplest form and make a game or song out of it.
We have been working on colours for a couple of weeks (and we've tossed in animals too just to bring some variety). What has been hard is, because of the language barriers, we can't have colours mixed with shapes or overly colourful pages because a red truck usually has white, black and sometimes yellow accents on it which I now see can be confusing. And when I point to a red triangle... how does he know if 'red' is describing the shape or the name of the colour.
Important: All of these resources are only available when we are doing tot school—the idea behind this is that it is special and he is more attentive and excited to do each activity because it’s the only time in the day he gets to use them. Of course he has many other toys he can play with the rest of the day. This seems to be working!
Falling Bears- This is supposed to be a learning
bingo game, but what I do is, Ezra can arrange the coloured bear squares
anywhere on the board. Then I take a bear, say it’s colour, and drop it from up
high. Ezra gets 2 chances to catch the
bear and then he puts it on the matching bear square. *I was very excited when, unguided, Ezra
began to place the little bears on the squares with the little bears and the
big bears on the big bear squares... it just happened—YAY!*
Puzzles- Okay, so puzzles are a given, but I had to
borrow some board puzzles and they’ve been great. We have 3 puzzles with farm animals so we can
say the name of each animal when he takes the piece out and puts it back
in. We alternate between books and puzzles and activities to keep the time exciting.
Books- So this may seem like a no brainer... but no
reading actually happens. We only talk
about one or two things on a page right now or I ask him to find something on
the page. We have to find super simple
books without many pictures so that we can make sure that he can understand how
the words I say will match what he is seeing.
Colour Match Pegs- I totally stole this from someone online... sorry whoever, but I forget where I found it. Basically, the colour on the clothes pegs matches the circles and he can match them up. This was the first activity I actually saw improvement on within a few days. Interestingly enough, I thought colours would be the basic thing to teach, but matching and seeing the differences in the colours is the base skill he’s been learning. Still, 2 ½ weeks into it, one minute he can get it all right and the next moment he can think that every colour is called blue or purple (no big deal) and he can think that grey and pink match (meh).
Bells- 2 years ago, we bought coloured melody bells and
haven’t had the chance to use them... until now! Once again, we’re not using them for the
reason they were made (or bought!) We
use them in one of the songs we sing about ringing bells high & low
etc. But the best use has been for
colour matching. I set 5 bells on one
side of the room (blue, red, yellow, green, orange). Ezra and I stand on the opposite side of the
room. I have large piece of paper in
each of the colours and I hold them behind my back. I look Ezra in the eyes and say “Ezra, could
you go get me the.... red bell”. He then
runs to the other side of the room and finds the bell that matches the colour I’m
holding (red). When he picks it up he
waves it above his head and runs back to me (while we yell “ring-a-ling-a-ling”). I then put the red paper on the ground and he
puts the bell on it. AND repeat until
all the bells are in front of me. This
is a highlight for him—running, yelling, making an unholy amount of noise with
those bells and lots of praise from his momma!
Opposites- I can’t believe I brought these in, but he
just seemed ready. In everyday language
I noticed he’s understanding words like open and close, and up and down. So, I thought it might be a good opportunity
to be intentional about teaching it.
These are simple 2 piece puzzles and so we can say the words, look at
the puzzle pictures, do an action with it and then put the pieces together. Talk, touch, do... these are good learning ingredients
for boys (it would be perfect for him if we could add in taste!!!)
Singing & Finger Play- And of course the staple
to every day is singing. We doing the Itsy
Bitsy Spider, Row, Row, Row Your Boat,
his favourite- 5 Little Monkeys, and a bunch more. All of these have actions, running times and
lots of eye contact (super good for attachment).
Wow, now that I write it down, that seems like a lot. It’s not—it goes quickly. It’s always fun for him or we stop doing
it. We do this while Liam does his first 1 or 2 subjects so that Ezra gets one on one attention at the beginning of the day. He plays much better after this.
Ezra came to our family, not just with a language barrier, but without having someone read to him, didn't know what any animals were (never saw them), and had no concept of most of the things other 3 year olds have had exposure to. It's not that he just needed to learn the English word for circle, or red, or cow... he needed to learn what those things were to begin with. What a learning experience this is for both of us!
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| I seriously LOVE my boys! |
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