Not only did it keep my cooped-indoors-and-bouncing-off-the-walls children entertained for a good thirty minutes, it also provided us with a great opportunity for language development.
- I used self talk and parallel talk to model simple 1-3 word phrases that described what daughter was doing
- I paired actions and words together so that she would imitate both. We said "shake shake" while shaking sprinkles into the snow, "stir stir" while stirring our snow in our cups, and "bye bye" while waving to animals that we buried in the snow.
- I imitated her actions while using new, simple words to go along with the reactions that she was having to the experience. When she made a face after touching the snow, I imitated her and said, "cold!" Later, when she ate her sprinkles and smiled, I did the same and said, "yum!" The best part was that she then said these new words later in the activity on her own.
- I used expansion to respond to her simple words by increasing her sentence by one word. When she said "snow," I said, "cold snow!" When she said "eat" I said "eat snow!"
- I gave her little directions to follow as we played ("put some in my cup, please") and showed her what to do if she didn't seem to know.
- I modeled pretend play actions like drinking, stirring, and baking.
- I helped her take turns with her brother having a "snow picnic." Later on, I worked on narrative skills by retelling the snow picnic experience with my son later before bedtime.