Water Animals Monthly Theme

While looking up the holidays this month, I saw Sea Week and some other days that were more around animals, specifically aquatic animals, so I decided that would make a great theme. Next month, there will be more animals, just a different group of animals. Most of the Holidays I picked for this month are for animals but there are so many holidays each day you can always celebrate and have fun with.

Holidays

3rd World Wild Life Day

5th- 13th Sea Week (in New Zealand)

12th- Plant a Flower Day

14th- National Children's Craft Day

17th- St Patrick's Day

20th- World Frog Day

22nd- International Seal Day

27th- Manatee Appreciation Day

31st- Easter

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Activities

I have decided to break the weeks up and do things by week more or as you'll see maybe half a week. We go to the library each Tuesday and will get books for our theme. I'll base activities around that more or less mini-theme of the week.

4th-10th to go with Sea Week.

5th- 13th Sea Week (in New Zealand)  

I'm not from New Zealand but we like the sea. This is what first made me think of Water Animals for this month. We will have a "Water animal rescue" sensory play one day this week. It takes a little planning because we will put our little sea animals in some blue Jello that will need to set up. Then break them free with hands or tools of your choice. This is a good sensory activity for little ones who still like to taste things.

We will also have some blue-dyed rice for a more daily sensory bin and can have our sea animals in there otherwise. I like to have a dry, more "clean" sensory bin option for when I'm working and my little one would like to do one of his bins. That will be our monthly sensory bin and an option whenever he may want to do a bin.

Other clean sensory options, even cleaner than a rice bin, would be a sensory bottle or bag. You can use a water bottle with blue water and some sea animals. You could use some sand, blue water, and sea animals in a bag, make sure it's a freezer bag, and maybe double bag and tape the top so they can't open it.

11th-17th St Patty's theme

12th- Plant a Flower Day

It will still be a little too cold to plant a flower outside where I am, but I hope you have warmer weather for it. I think we'll just play with some fake flowers to sort colors and count. If it's nice we may walk up to the store and get some flowers as well. Playing in dirt is always a fun sensory activity and we will play in plenty of dirt this spring/summer.

14th- National Children's Craft Day

We are going to make some Rainbow art by taping some crayons together and coloring with them. You can use whatever colors you'd like. You can work on naming colors and imitating drawing lines.

17th- St Patrick's Day

We have a St Patty's Day Sensory bin. It uses the same split peas and green lentils as the Dinosaur bin. Golden coins and pots replace the dinosaurs. We will count the coins and fill the pots. This bin will be an option for the beginning of the month.

18th-21 Frogs

I know it's not a full week but the following few weeks make more sense broken up this way.

20th- World Frog Day

We will do 5 Little Speckled Frogs. I have a printable through Canva here. We also have Frog bath toys that we will use to do frogs in our blue rice sensory bin throughout the week. We will also use a water sensory bin. We can use the toys or the frogs in the printable to swim in our bins. Kids like finger plays and repetition. You can also work on the action word "Swimming."

We'll do some large motor and jump like a frog. If you have older kids they may be interested in the life cycle of a frog from tadpole to frog. Little ones, probably not so much. You can work on following directions and the action word "jump."

22-27th Underwater Animals

It just made sense to me to put these two holidays together and separate from frogs.

22nd- International Seal Day

27th- Manatee Appreciation Day

We will be playing in the Blue Rice sensory bin with our water animals. Hopefully, you'll have at least a seal in your selection.

We will also be visiting the Aquarium during the week with our small group of homeschool friends. Although we also plan on visiting the seals over the weekend at the local zoo with Daddy. Either option will be fun and we're lucky we can do both. We will use action words like "Swimming, eating, sleeping."

28th-31st Easter

I know not everyone may celebrate Easter and you can continue to play with your underwater animals if you don't.

31st Easter

We have some little carrots and Easter eggs for our sensory bin. You guessed it, coins and pots out and carrots and eggs into our peas and lentils bin. You can put peas in the eggs to shake and make musical instruments. You can work on colors, and request to "open." Then there is finding matching colors to make whole eggs.

Easter Egg hunts are so much fun to add a Speech twist, put either little items, or print out pictures of your target items or sounds in the eggs. Then hide them around the room. When they find an egg, they open it and can say the item. For littler kids, they can make requests for "help" or "open." You can work on colors, or prepositions, "find the egg under the chair." The possibilities are endless. A lot of times after they find all the eggs, they'll want you to hide them again or they want to hide them for you to find.

If running around to find eggs wasn't large motor enough, hop like bunnies. You can add the following directions, and hop to the chair.

Besides these themed activities, we will have water animal books available all month. Books like Rainbow Fish and Touch and Feel Ocean Friends. We will play with our reusable sticker book with the ocean page. It works on his fine motor skills. He also is doing well with telling a story as he makes a picture. You can work on naming the animals and the action words "swimming, diving." You can model telling a story while you help your little one make a picture. Here are some other craft ideas from TotSchool: Ocean theme.

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