Safari Animals Monthly Theme

We did water animals last month and staying on this animal train. Animals are always fun to play with. Speech-wise, we often work on animal sounds before words. Many kids like to roar like a lion.

Holidays

2nd Children's Picture Book Day

3rd National Find a Rainbow Day

5-9 National Wildlife Week

8th National Zoo Lovers Day

14th Garden Day

16th Save the Elephants Day

25th World Penguin Day

27th Marine Animal Day

30th Mr. Potatohead Day

Activities

Children's Picture Book Day- It's good the 2nd is on our Library Day. We will visit the library, do Story Time, and get new books. We will probably come home and read more books. We like to look at books every day. It's such a great way to introduce so much language. The repetition of reading the same book over and over is good for young language learners.

National Find a Rainbow Day- We will do some Rainbow Coloring. Tape a few crayons together to color with them all together. You name the colors as you put them together. You can also work on imitating actions of drawing a line up or across. Some kids might be able to imitate drawing circles or even start trying to draw letters. Writing letters is pretty advanced for a toddler though, that would be more of a preschool skill.

National Wildlife Week- This week here made me settle on another month of an animal theme. Instead of just Wildlife, it seemed too big. I settled on Safari. We can still go to the zoo to see the animals from the Sarafi. We can play with lions and tigers, which is always fun. So yes for the week, actually the month we will be playing with all the animal toys. See below for some animal toy ideas to put into your rotation.

National Zoo Lovers Day- The day isn't a day we can go to the zoo but we will try to go the weekend before. We are Zoo lovers over here. We used pictures of the animals we took to make picture cards. We use them to pick what animals we want to see and learn animal names.

Garden Day- We will start our Spring sensory bin with fake flowers in our dried beans. We have gardening tools and little pots. When it's nice enough and we start our real garden, he gets a pot of dirt (no plants) to dig in himself. If you live somewhere nicer you could play in real dirt or if you're more adventurous than I am.

Save the Elephants Day- We will look for some Elephant books at the library. We will make a paper plate Elephant head art project, using the plate as the head and cutting out shapes for the ears, trunk, eyes, and mouth. It works on body parts.

World Penguin Day- Who doesn't love penguins? They waddle so cute. For the Penguins let's work on some actions like waddling like a penguin. Add in other animals like hopping like a frog or a kangaroo. In my TPT store, I have a Walk Like An Animal Printable. Using the cards they can identify an animal by the picture and follow directions to do as the animal does. It's a great large motor activity when they need to get their wiggles out.

Mr. Potatohead Day- Well of course we'll play with Mr. Potatohead. Besides the obvious of working on body parts. Mr. Potatohead is good at working on action words "Make Potatohead jump." I like to have more than one and make them talk to each other. We don't have the different sizes, unfortunately, they have a Potatohead family but you can work on sizes with them and match the correct face to each size.

Sensory Bins

Spring- As mentioned above, our Spring Sensory bin will have fake flowers and gardening tools in a bean box. This will probably be out for April and May.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom- I'm also excited about our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom sensory bin I made with some letter pasta I dyed as the base. There will be magnetic letters as well. The magnetic letters had a magnet board that came with it but since we usually do our sensory bins in the kitchen I will have a coconut tree to go on the fridge. We can dig and explore the letter pasta, finding the letters to put on our tree. Sometimes we will read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom while we play, and we can find the letters from the page. I often say knowing letters and numbers is not important before they go to preschool. They need to use functional language and be able to make requests and communicate their needs and wants before focusing on academic things. So this is an idea, but if this is not where your child is at, don't focus on the letters, playing in some letter pasta like any other filler is fine as well.

Safari- Just like the tube of Ocean animals, there was a tube with Safari animals in it as well. I'm not the biggest fan of regular sand but I love Kinetic sand and a taste-safe option is ground-up Cheerios. You can name animals, and work on animal sounds and action words.

Toys

I love playing with puzzles for matching and identifying familiar items, and for this type of theme, animal sounds. I like the Melissa and Doug wooden puzzles like chunky puzzles and peg puzzles. Any puzzle though with the picture under the spot so they can match is best for this age. You can expand a regular puzzle in and out of the activity. You can tape down some pieces like pictured and they can use fine motor skills to peel it off and rescue the animals. You can also add the pieces to a sensory bin.

We will be getting tons of books from the library because of course, free books are awesome. Use your local library so you can get new books and save money. Yes, I have a ton of books in our collection but I also get 4-5 new books almost every week at the library. Some good types of books for this age group are Peek-a-Flap Books which can work on saying "open" for the flaps. Touch and Feel books and Pop A Dot Books can bring a child in to attend to a book with tactile spots.

Animal figures can be fun to play with, either the little ones that are in the sensory bin or others can be fun to play with, again for identifying animals, animal sounds, and actions. If you have a cheetah and another animal, you can work on fast or slow. Cheetahs run fast, and the zebra walks.

We like our Reusable Sticker Book as well. We used it for the Water animals theme too. It's good for fine motor skills. You can work on identifying animals and making stories while you play.

More pictures will be posted throughout the month of the activities we do. Check them out on Facebook or Instagram at Sassy Speechy.

Speech Goals from The Rosetti Infant-Toddler Language Scale.

9-12 months

Says "mama" or "dada" meaningfully

Imitates consonant and vowel combinations

Imitates non-speech sounds

Vocalizes with intent frequently

Uses a word to call a person

Says one to two words spontaneously

Vocalizes a desire for a change in activities

Imitates the name of familiar objects

Attends to new words

Gives objects upon verbal request

Looks at the person saying the child's name

Performs a routine activity upon verbal request

Looks at familiar objects mentioned during a conversation

Follows simple commands occasionally

Understands simple questions

Gestures in response to verbal requests

 Verbalizes or vocalizes in response to verbal requests

Participates in speech-routine games

Identifies two body parts

12-15 months

Shakes head "no"

Says or imitates eight to ten words spontaneously

Names objects frequently

Imitates new words spontaneously

Combines vocalization and gesture to obtain a desired object

Produces three animal sounds

Wakes with a communicative call

Sings independently

Takes turns vocalizing with children

Expresses early developing modifiers

Follow one-step commands during play

Responds to requests to say words

Maintains attention to pictures

Enjoys rhymes and finger plays

Responds to "give me" command

Points to two action words in pictures

Understands some prepositions

Understands new words

Identifies three body parts on self or a doll

15-18 months

Says 15 meaningful words

Uses consonant sounds, such as /t,d,n,h/

Talks rather than uses gestures

Imitates words overheard in conversation

Asks "What's that?"

Asks for "more"

Names five to seven familiar objects upon request

Identifies six body parts or clothing items on a doll

Finds familiar objects upon request

Identifies objects by category

Understands 50 words

18-21 months

Uses single words frequently

Uses sentence-like intonational patterns

Imitates environmental noises

Verbalizes two different needs

Uses two-word phrases occasionally

Identifies four body parts and clothing items on self

Understands the commands "sit down" and "come here"

Chooses five familiar objects upon request

Understands the meaning of action words

Identifies pictures when named

21-24 months

Uses two-word phrases frequently

Uses 50 different words

Uses new words regularly

Relates personal experiences

Uses three-words phrases occasionally

Refers to self by name

Uses early pronouns occasionally

Uses a mean length of 1.25-1.50 morphemes per utterance

Chooses one object from a group of five upon verbal request

Follows novel commands

Follows a two-step related directions

Understands new words rapidly

24-27 months

Imitates two numbers or unrelated words upon request

Uses three-word phrases frequently

Asks for assistance with personal needs

Uses action words

Uses a mean length of 1.50-2.0 morphemes per utterance

Points to four words in pictures

Recognizes family member's names

Understands the concept of one

Understands size concepts

27-30 months

Names one color

Refers to self by pronoun consistently

Uses two sentence types

Responds to greetings consistently

Uses negation

Uses a mean length of 2.00-2.50 morphemes per utterance

Responds to simple questions

Identifies four objects by function

Understands location phrases

30-33 months

Answers questions with "yes" or "no'

Imitates a series of three numbers or unrelated words

Uses plurals

Uses prepositions

Understands five common action words

Follow two-step unrelated commands

Understands the concepts one and all

Answers yes and no questions correctly

33-36 months 

Relates recent experiences through verbalization

Uses verb forms

Expresses physical states

Converses in sentences

Counts to three

Uses a mean length of 2.50-3.00 morphemes per utterance

Shows interest in why and how things work

Follows a three-step unrelated command

Identifies parts of an object

Responds to wh- questions

Follows commands with two familiar attributes