Today...

... at school, a group of my kindy kids did the loveliest thing. 

I work with children with language impairments.  My kindy kids (3-4yrs) range from unintelligible babble, to parroting the last word of what you say, to producing one word themselves up to a sentence of about 2 parts (eg. 'The dog is sitting', although in their case it is mostly more like 'Dog sit').  With these language delays also comes poor comprehension, memory, fine motor skills and listening skills so some days you really wonder if certain children in the class are actually taking in what you are saying/teaching/playing.  Their social skills are also weak as they don't have the language to engage/join in/negotation/converse with their peers.

So we keep activities short and sharp, very oral language based, very game like and hopefully 'fun' to keep their interest.

One of the activities we have been doing a bit lately is Memory Tray.  You know, where you put some items on a tray, get the students to look at them and then cover them up and take one away.  They have to guess what is missing.  This activity helps them learn the names of objects (currently vegetables as our theme is Food) as well as improve their visual memory skills.  They get so excited when they work out which one out of 5 or 6 items is missing. 

just like this from here

So anyhow, this afternoon we had free play happening while the students were taking turns to come and make a collage using orange coloured things.  One of the kids asked if he could get the rug off the doll's bed and when I looked over next he had gathered four of his friends and they were playing Memory Tray together using coloured blocks.  I was just so proud of them.  They had remembered the rules to play the game, they were taking turns and they had used social skills to ask others to play with them. 

It is so nice to see that evidence that they are learning and that things are sinking in!