As fall approaches there are many fun and educational games for kids with disabilities. The only needed materials are a few apples, the book Ten Apples Up On Top (Random House, 1998) by Dr. Seuss, and a parent who is ready for a little fun.
Read Ten Apples Up On Top
Kids learn from repeated reading. They learn new words. They learn sentence structures and social language. They also learn the concepts in the book.
In the book Ten Apples Up On Top, the concept is basic counting. The fun animal characters boast about the number of apples that they can balance on their heads. They repeat the numbers and the phrase up on top. However, at the end of the book all of the apples fall.
The words in this book are few, a total of 75 words all together. However, the number concepts and the placement concept of up on top are clearly taught as the child reader wonders what will happen.
Kids with cognitive delays love the funny animals. They learn counting while having fun.
Get the Struggling or Reluctant Reader to Act Out the Book
Parents can make the learning even more real by taking the time to act out the apple juggling with their child. Kids learn from doing. This is especially true of the child with development delays who needs hands on learning experiences.
A parent can try to balance a real apple on his head, or he can challenge the child to try. Remember the more fun and the more engaged the child is, the more he will understand.
Encourage Kids With Development Delays to Try More Activities
Use a real apple, or a foam apple, to play a hide-and-seek games. Kids with language delays often have difficulty understanding placement words such as:
- on
- in
- under
- next to
- behind
In this activity, the parent hides one or more apples. When the child finds an apple, he is encouraged to use his speech to tell where the apples were. For kids with extreme language difficulties, it is helpful for a sibling to demonstrate the game, or for the parent to be the one looking for the apples first. This way the child can hear the words and phrases to describe the placement before playing. The game can be made even more challenging by using apples that are more than one color and saying the color of the found apple and where it was.
Using parent and child read aloud fun books is a great way to encourage the struggling or reluctant reader. It merges the importance of literacy with the needed bonding time of parent and child. Ten Apples Up On Top fits both items for the child with developmental delays.
Lynn Moore - Moore is a freelance writer, experienced special education teacher, and mother of two. She has worked as a developmental therapist for ...
