Homemade Game of Dominoes

How to Make It

- Using powerpoint is the easiest as it has the funtions I need to draw shapes, customise the colours, insert photos.

- Photos can be obtained from professional photography catalogue websites like http://www.corbis.com/, http://www.fotosearch.com/. I specifically choose photos with a white background, where possible, as it looks "clean" and more professional. He seems to be more interested when I use such photos.

- For my son who's still young, I just used 4 different pictures. Ensure that you have 2 sets of all the combinations from that 4 pictures as it'll make it much easier to play with a young child.

- Print, cut and paste unto cardboard/art card. You can instead use plastic/paper corrugated material for a chunkier feel for very young kids or kids whose fine motor skills are more challenged.

Variations for Playing It

- For younger kids, you may neeed to customise the rules of the game. Instead of turning over a domino piece and then finding that there isnt a matching picture (which may greatly discourage him), you can deliberately choose a domino piece that has one matching picture & have the child match & place it side by side.

- Themes that can be used: colours, numbers, alphabets, ocean animals, farm animals etc. There really is no end to the possible variations. Start with a theme that interests the child e.g. the theme vehicles could have cards with the pictures of a digger, dump truck, bus and train. When he gets the idea of the game, introduce other sets which have themes you target.

- For encouraging speech/as part of speech therapy activity, what I did was to ask him which side he'd like the next piece to join up to. Then have him verbally request for a piece that has that photo. E.g. "Mama, I want a card with a photo of the man kicking". Since we're currently practising the "c/k" sound & it's still hard for him to say such a long sentence, I just have him say "kicking" or "walking" or "cooking" etc.

Benefits of the Dominoes Game

- reinforce vocabulary of new themes introduced in other activities

- turn taking

- visual discrimination

- reinforce concepts introduced in other activities e.g. counting (counting the dots) or numbers (matching roman numerals) or colours

- fine motor

- hand eye coordination

- as a speech therapy game

Why I Made It
- Last year, I came across a version of printable dominoes for young kids on one of the toddler activities websites. It had the traditional dots on the face of it except that it's much larger and colour coded. We played it to reinforce counting & colour recognition.

- This time round, I made it as part of speech therapy homework to encourage practising the middle "k" sound (see earlier post: http://humbledmum-myjourney.blogspot.com/2009/09/speech-therapy-homework.html)

Want a copy?

I'll gladly share the set photographed above with those who want it (saves you time) - just drop me an email. (My email is in my profile)

Montessori Pink Series - Middle vowel

Homemade Middle Vowel Phonic Activity Sheet

As part of the Montessori reading pink series, my son ought to be able to identify the middle vowel of decodeable words. Pink series decodeable words are either vowel-consonant types (e.g on, in) or consonant-vowel-consonant types (like in the photo above).

I made the sheet for the middle vowel activity in the same manner as that for the ending consonant activity I wrote about in my last post. I merely changed the words.

I decided to start off by choosing words with the same beginning & ending consonant, like in the photo, & the only variant is the vowel. This would help emphasise the middle vowel sound. I got that idea from a VCD he likes watching - The Word Machine. In it they had a very catchy jingle about a big bog bug in a bag.

Having played the middle vowel game with my son, I realised that it's harder than the ending consonant activity, so I help him out by emphasising the middle vowel repeatedly. That's ok because it was stated as such in the montessori literary file I borrowed from my friend. The reason it's harder is that the vowel tends not to be emphasised in normal speech. That friend is also a kindergarten principal and she did agree that it's hard for the kids to identify it.

From my observation, the difficulty is the similarity in the sounds of the short vowel e & short vowel a. For e.g. b-a-g and b-e-g sounds the same. She wondered if my son had difficulty differentiating between the vowel i & e. Having thought about it, I think he's able to differentiate i & e.

I've made a few more pages of words with the middle vowel missing in the same manner (e.g. tap, top; cap, cop, cup) & will slowly introduce them over the next few weeks.

By the way, this activity also requires him to use his fine motor in picking up the correct letters from the box & laying them on the blanks (hand eye); reinforces alphabet recognition; visual discrimination etc.

To the beach!

Packed everyone into the car & went off to Kelanang beach today! This would be our 3rd or 4th visit this year. Traffic was good, weather was good - no haze, clear blue skies!

*will upload photos from hubby's handphone when time permits.

Benefits:

(1) Walking on sand gives him good tactile input & requires good balance.

(2) Walking in water gives resistance & challenges his balance even more (he'll happily splash around in ankle deep water, but if it's almost to his knees, he'll want to hold our hand)

(3) Talk about/show him the surroundings e.g. how the mangrove trees were different in terms of their roots, compared to normal trees. Showed him what animals live in a mangrove habitat e.g. crabs, mudskippers, fishes (cognitive, biology lesson)

(5) Catching crabs requires fine motor skills, hand eye co-ordination, faster reflexes. He caught a lot of crabs with his bare hands (with his fingers actually) during the previous visit. This time round, there were much fewer crabs & he wasnt interested. Instead, he was stomping on the crabs! Not to worry, he didnt kill them. They are much faster in burrowing themselves than he was in stomping them. Stomping with one foot requires good balance.

(6) Picking sea shells requires fine motor, hand eye, squat to stand, bending down. Later at home, you can use the shells in various ways: counting, visual discrimination, biology lesson, decoration during sandplay.

(7) Receptive language (speech input) - you can expand his vocabulary e.g. waves, tide coming in, estuary, hermit crab

(8) Expressive language (speech output) - he has the chance to use what he's learnt e.g. he surprised me by describing the clouds as "fluffy clouds", a term that I used only once, several months ago during a trip to the neighbourhood park.

(9) Bringing back sand for sandplay at home! There are areas on that beach where the sand is very fine & white.

(10) Sandplay at the beach itself of course! E.g. build sand castles, scoop & pour activities etc.

(11) Catching fish using a net requires very fast reflexes, balance, gross motor. We forgot to bring a net, so it was papa who caught fish using his bare hands. Papa the hero caught 3! We tried to help but fish escaped instead! : )

(12) Flying a kite requires gross motor skills, balance, visual tracking. We didnt bring the kite cos we knew we wouldn't have time to fly it cos we left much later than normal.

(13) Drawing/writing in the sand - doesnt require a mature tripod grip, so it's good to do this to let his creativity flow, without being hindered by his disability. Also good as a fun alternative to writing with the usual pen, pencil, colour pencil, marker, crayon, chalk etc on paper, whiteboard, blackboard. Fine motor skill still needed.

(14) A lesson in caring for the environment. Unfortunately, there was trash washed up on certain parts of the estuary (apart from the usual plastic, I came across a bottle, hard hat & tyre!). Use this opportunity to teach him that things should be disposed in their proper place or else it gets washed up on the beach etc & dirties the homes of the crabs, fish etc.

Note:
(1) We have to check to make sure the moon cycle isn't at the full moon stage cos the waves comes right up & there's no beach left. He's fearful if the waves are close to him.
(2) Bring insect repellant or at least wear long pants that can be rolled up. I was badly bitten.
(3) There's decent hawker fare at the purpose built "food court" but lots of flies
(4) There's a children's play area with the usual slides, climbing equipment etc.
(5) There's proper toilet but its yucky (very wet, smelly, no soap, sandy/muddy floor - some mums were rinsing their kids in the toilet). Bring your own hand sanitiser & toilet paper.