Hello from your friendly therapists and staff at Kids Place Therapy Services! This cold weather has taken over and January is here! While you’ll find most of our therapists inside with some hot cocoa, slippers, and blankets, we do know a thing or two about having fun outside in the snow. Snowball fights, pushing sleds, building snowmen, shoveling snow, and building forts are a fun way to get your kiddo outside and helping while also providing opportunities for heavy work. You can also work on vocabulary targets such as objects (shovel, snow, sled, hill), descriptors (cold, light, fluffy, sharp, strong), and actions (slide, push, lift, scoop) as well as gestalts (Let’s dig deeper, it’s so heavy, he’s so tall, there’s too much snow). If your plan is to keep indoors on these cold January days, winter crafts can be a great way to incorporate different textures such as cotton balls or marshmallows. Penguins, fluffy polar bears, and snowmen are just a few ideas for winter crafts this month. Books are another great pastime when escaping the cold. Some themed books for reading in winter include There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow; Sneezy the Snowman; Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?; Over and Under the Snow; and Tacky the Penguin. These books provide opportunities for imitation and production of a variety of vocabulary targets, animal and environmental sounds, and more! Picture scenes within these books are another great way to work on answering wh- questions. Whether you are staying indoors or braving the snow, stay warm and have a blast!
