Monday, January 4, 2010

Sensory Tub Beginning Sound Sort



I always have to think of new ways to practice things with Bear.  She'd done beginning sound sorts for a while (as seen in the photo below) with her Melissa and Doug magnetic upper and lower case fridge magnets and the picture tiles from a color sorting game her Auntie and Uncle got her for her birthday.  Lately she hasn't been interested in sorting the initial sounds, so I came up with a new way to do the same thing.  I rounded up some miniatures I have been collecting and hid them in a cotton ball sensory tub.  (This sensory tub was a good way to repurpose the colored cotton balls my husband accidentally bought one sleepless night back when J-jo was first born.)  As she found the objects I would give her two letters and ask her to choose the letter for the sound she heard at the beginning of the word.  She did quite well, but she's been doing this kind of sort for a while now, since she was 20 months. You can read about that here and here.
Lately, though, she gives a whole bunch of silly answers during a lot of our time together.  I'm pretty sure she knows the answer and is just testing me to see my reaction.  Any recommendations as to what I should do?

7 comments:

  1. My guess is she's bored with them (since she already knows the sounds). Perhaps take a break from sounds and move onto something else for a while?

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  2. Fun activity! I have no idea what to suggest for the silly answers. We are going through something similar here and I'm not sure what to do either.

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  3. This is a great idea/activity!!

    We have plenty of silly answers coming our way here too. Sometimes I find them funny and other times not so funny:-).

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  4. Love this post AND your drawers! What a fun idea, using the sensory tub. You know, I forgot to let you know that we copied your idea of hiding the letters of their name in the tub and having them search through (and ultimately, spell their name). It is one of Maddie's VERY favorite things to choose. So, thank you!

    As far as silly answers... I haven't encountered much of that...yet. The only time I DO get goofy responses is if she's distracted by something or, like Mari-Ann said, bored. Your activities certainly don't seem boring but maybe it's just easy for her. I don't know.

    On a separate note, love the colored cotton balls! :)

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  5. This is a great idea and I am going to steal it. :) And I Love those colored cotton balls. Can you believe I've never before seen colored cotton balls in my life?!? As for silly answers, well there are plenty of them here too... normally if it's bugging me too much or I can't get him back on track we just switch to something more interesting (for him).

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  6. My daughter has been playing with her oatmeal sensory tub every single day. I gave her letter magnets and she hid them herself in the tub, then she found them and said the sounds. I love your phonics drawers

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  7. if she's getting silly with answers, I'd say move to end sounds to keep her engaged and challenged. . .
    :*)

    great ideas here!

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