Experimenting with Learning Treasure Hunts
Learn Play Grow brings goals and strategies from school and therapy to life at home through developmentally-appropriate play that includes siblings and engages parents.
Learning doesn’t just happen at school, and therapy is not something to do once a week. Opportunities for learning and using strategies and skills from therapy are all around!
Treasure hunts are great ways to practice descriptive language, position words, counting and comparing amounts, and more. Show or tell me what you found! How do they feel (texture)? What can we do with them (function)? Where did you find them? Were they in/on/under/behind/between (position words)? Do you have a few or many? Which one has more (numeracy)?
Science experiments are great ways to make predictions, ask and answer questions, sequence events, and more. What do you think will happen (prediction)? How can we make something happen? Why did that happen (WH questions)? What happened first, next, and last (sequencing)?
Here are some of the lessons my student and family learned through play during a recent around-the-house treasure hunt and sink-or-swim experiment:
🔴 Sticky and heavy cough drops sink, and smooth and light cough drop wrappers float
🟠 Cat toys with holes on the outside float, and cat toys with bells on the inside sink
🟡 One whole orange with a peel is bigger in size than 4 grapes but fewer in quantity
🟢 If you peel and segment an orange, it has more pieces than 4 grapes
🔵 It’s ok to get wet and messy...it’s fun and clean up is a great way to practice problem-solving
Stay tuned for tools and strategies on the blog and inspiration on social media to help your family, practice, or school learn, play, and grow to success, and please share your favorite treasure hunt memories or sink or swim experiment findings!
