So many fun St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin fillers are in the craft stores right now! One of the fillers I added last year to my St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin were sparkly green top hats. I ended up pulling them out of the bin this year to use for another activity with beanie baby/stuffed animals to have a St. Patrick’s Day “party” in therapy!
What we used:
-sparkly green top hats
-beanie babies and stuffed animals, or preferred characters from TV shows, etc…
-painter’s tape (you’ll need something thicker than scotch tape for it to stick well)
-Melissa & Doug wooden cake set
-other play food/drink items that you want to use
The first thing we did was choose characters/animals who were coming to our party.
Targets we worked on:
-animal names
-animal sounds
-sentence starters like “Let’s…” and “It’s…” to work on mitigation of gestalts. (Examples: “Let’s get Pete” “Let’s get a duck” or “It’s a fish!” when we pulled one out of the box.)
Next, we got the tape and stuck it to the bottom of the hats and then put them on the animals’/characters’ heads.
Targets we worked on:
-verbs: “pull” “tear” “fold” “stick” with the tape
-s-blends: “stick” “sparkle”
-“on” (either as a VC target or as a preposition target)
-CVC, VC, C1V1C2V2 words: “hat” “Pete” (when we used a favorite character), “on” “party” and “happy” (They’re “happy” they have a “hat” for their “party”)
-play imitation: we did exaggerated “puuuullllll” when we pulled the tape off, and imitated sticking the hat on, and doing different actions with the animals
After this part, we played with the cake set and other play food at our St Patrick’s Day party!
Targets:
-verbs: eat, drink, cut, slice, stick (when we stuck on the velcro toppings on the cake)
-s blends: stick, slice, scoop (if you use an ice cream set to pair with the cake during this part!)
-animal vocabulary, following directions, WH questions: “Give a slice to the pig” “Who wants a piece of cake?” “Who should we give this one to?” “What does fish want?” “Pour a drink for the duck” etc…
-play imitation: cutting a slice of cake, cutting velcro food, feeding the animals, pretending to pour in a cup, giving the animals something to drink
-food vocabulary
-categories: food vs animals, food vs drinks, and higher level categorizing such as fruits, vegetables, desserts, and meat.
-modeling “Let’s…” and “It’s…” phrases: “Let’s give one to the shark” “Let’s get a drink” “It’s yummy!”
-core vocabulary: eat, like, want
Let me know if you use this activity in your sessions!
Leave a Reply