Book of the Week: I Like Myself!

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Wow! I feel like it's been such a long time since I've written a book of the week post!  I brought home some books to write about over the summer and somehow never got motivated enough to do anything with them.  I guess I needed some time off from more than just work over the summer!

I just finished up my first full week of therapy and this year I'm so excited about a new project that will be happening at my school!  I'm teaming up with a super-fabulous OT and wonderful special educator to run a group in a substantially separate preschool classroom!  We are following the themes that our preschool curriculum uses (the theme for September is "All About Me").  Also, we are going to center our lessons each week around a story and this is the first book we used:

"I Like Myself!" by Karen Beaumont is a fun story that celebrates our differences - all the things that make us unique!  The illustrations are great and the kids wanted to comment on each page of the story!  So for our follow-up activities, we wanted to celebrate the things that make our students unique!

First, the students made "Paper Bag Back Packs" similar to these.  Here's our sample:

The children took them home and were asked to find something to put in the bag that represents themselves and bring it back to school for show-and-tell.  My son actually had the same assignment in his preschool class (not the back-pack craft, just the bag with a poem on it...which still was cute!)  So, for example, he put in the following items:

• Foam #4 from a puzzle - "I am 4 years old"
• Thomas the Train:  "Thomas is my favorite toy"
• A small book:  "I love to read"
• A small soccer ball:  "I play soccer"

For the speech part of the activity, I wanted to look at the students' ability to provide personal information and to name a member of a given category.  I found a few "All About Me" fill-in the blank sheets, but decided to create my own.  Here's what it looks like:

(There's also a "girl" version)

You can either have the students draw a picture of themselves in the box, or take a picture and paste it in the box. Categories targeted include: color, food, movie, book, animal, song, and game. (BTW, my favorite response of the week went something like this: "What's your favorite color?" Yellow. "What's your favorite food?" Yellow. Can you relate???). You can download the "All About Me" sheets HERE.  

What are your favorite "All About Me" activities?