Ideas to Use with our Young Students

Diana Garcia-Mejia is a TVI (Teacher of the Visually Impaired) and has a Pre-K classroom for students with visual impairments. She also posts on social media and is a favorite resource for many TVIs and parents.

Here are a few of her ideas that have been posted on her Instagram page @prektvi

The Three Little Pigs Theme

Book, The Three Little Pigs with a hairdryer as the wolf and materials to blown down.

Diana loves The Three Little Pigs books and creates activities around the books that include goals and learning benchmarks.

Before reading the books, they tactilely explore the real materials mentioned in the story and test to see if they could really blow the objects away. The class uses a “big, bad hairdryer” to huff and puff.

Lakeshore sells models of the wolf and pigs as part of the “hands on” accessible activity where students can practice building their own homes for pigs.

Laskeshore Three Little Pigs STEM kit that includes wooden building type blocks, plastic wolf and three pigs and instruction cards. The picture includes a little girl trying to blow down the house she made. — Lakeshore Three Little Pigs STEM kit

Goldilocks and the Three Bears Theme

Photo of soft puppets- Goldilocks, Mama, Papa, and baby bear. — Goldilocks & the Three Bears Storytelling Puppet Set – Lakeshore

Puppets are a great tool to use to promote communication and to reenact the story. Have students try the different characters and move the story along by the the narrator.

Inspired by the book, the class has a craft that practices vocabulary and sizing for big, medium, and small.

Craft using three bowls that are big, medium, and small with the words under each and dry oatmeal in each.

Here large print, bubbled print, and braille labels under the paper circles can be used. It will represent the bowls for each bear and dry oatmeal to represent the porridge. If your student has CVI (Cortical/Cerebral Vision Impairment) use their preferred color on the bowls.

Senses Theme

Focusing in our senses with this 5 senses chart

My 5 Senses list with tactile objects; touch with cotton, smell with a smelly sticker, taste with candy, see with a craft eye ball, and hear with a bell. — Braille

Students are also taught a 5 Senses Song

(To the tune of BINGO)

I have 5 senses that is true.

Can you help name them?

See, hear, taste, touch and smell (Repeat 3x)

And these are my 5 senses.

Focus Craft on our Sense of Smell

I can smell craft that is a book with the title page and then different pages with different scents including; lemon and strawberry.

This “I Can Smell” book is an activity book with smelly stickers. APH (American Printing House) has stickers for purchase.

Getting creative with learning activities provides the necessary adaptions for our students to reach their learning goals. For more ideas visit Diana’s Instagram page @prektvi.