Bathtub Party Week

December 5th is National Bathtub Party Day!!  Yep, that's right, an actual day devoted to having a party in a bathtub.  I have absolutely no idea why this day exists, but because I just so happen to have a bathtub in my speech room, I thought I would create a theme week around this random holiday.

I normally only let me kids sit in the bathtub when they buy "Tub Time" during prize week, but I am going to let them take turns sitting in the tub during speech this week due to the theme.  I plan on bringing a short folding table in so the kids in the tub can still participate in the speech activities without getting out of the tub.

I created a few bathtub related activities to do with my speech kids that I thought I would share.

Defining Words:
Using a cloze sentence, the children will define bathtub related vocabulary.  Start by explaining category, function, and what a distinctive feature is before asking them to define words. 

Following Directions:
A bunch of my kids have a hard time with following directions especially ones using "before" and "after", so I whipped up some three and four step directions using those pesky temporal concept words. 

Drawing Inferences:
This skill always needs a little more work, so I created an activity targeting drawing inferences based on "hopefully" real life situations.  Let me know if you like it.

Four Types of Sentences:
For all of those who have fourth graders with goals based on the forth grade TEKS, this is the activity to you.  The kids have to determine if the sentence they draw is a declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, or imperative sentence by placing the rubber duck on the correct bathtub. 

Get the Bathtub Activities here!!

Rubber Duckies:
My sweet intern found these rubber duckies on amazon for $6.  To get them go here. 

The great thing about these particular rubber duckies is they are so colorful and come is sets.  I plan on hiding them around the room and having the kids find the ducks and then using qualitative and prepositional concepts, explain what duck they found and where they found it.  I can hold up one duck and ask the kids to find it's match, can ask them to find another duck of the same color but a different design, you get the picture. 

These ducks can be used to compare and contrast by color, design, the fact that they are all ducks, etc.  You can also use the ducks to work on quantitative concepts by passing them out in different amounts and asking the kids who has more, less, etc.   

We are planning on putting clues on the bottom of the ducks and having a little scavenger hunt as well.  I found pictures of different things related to rooms in my school and took pictures of parts of items in my speech room for the students to use as clues to infer where the next rubber ducky is hiding.  The last clue is part of a candy jar in my room, so each kid will have a reward at the end of the hunt.  Here are the clues I am using on the bottom of ducks.

 

Ok, wish me luck on letting my kids spend a week in a bath tub!!