St. Patrick's Day Open-Ended Board Game {FREEBIE}

use this board game freebie during the St. Patty's Day season

Leapin' Leprechauns! Take a look at the first board game I created! Featuring fantastic graphics by NinjaWoman and I Teach, What's Your Super Power.

It was fun to make, and I hope you can find a use for it in March. The game board is open-ended, so it can be used as reinforcement for any activity in any subject area. There are two versions in this download. The first one is sized to fit on a regular 8.5" x 11" piece of paper or cardstock.

The second version is enlarged to be printed on two sheets of paper. You will need to overlap the pages slightly when assembling. I recommend attaching it to a file folder and laminating for easy storage and durability. See picture below. We grabbed some Hopping Frogs to use as tokens.

Click here to download your {FREE} game boards! Enjoy!

Leave a Comment: Are you Irish?

Isn't everybody a little bit Irish on March 17th? :)

You may also enjoy this post: Valentine's Scratch-Off Cards

Practice Speech Goals Outside of the Speech Room

stickers for carryover practice and to let parents know what their child did in speech that day

A couple weeks ago I started writing what my students have been working on in speech on stickers and placing the stickers on their shirts, hoping that it would serve as reminders for them throughout the day to think about using their correct speech sounds. Teachers, classroom associates, parents, siblings, babysitters, bus drivers - ANYONE could ask the student about their speech sounds and hopefully they would get some practice on their goals outside of my classroom.

I've just been writing their speech sounds on mailing labels, but now I printed these up to use. The school I work at has a panther as a mascot, so I added some panther paws to dress up the labels a bit. Thanks to Graphics From the Pond for the clip art!

There are three different styles:

"I can say my ____ sound!"

"Today I practiced ____"

"Have you heard my say a ___ word"

These are sized to be printed on 1" x 2 5/8" mailing labels. Download your own here :)

These little sweeties wanted to pose for a picture "like buddies" :)

Leave a Comment: Do you have success sending home speech homework?

I sent home homework in December and January and only had two students return it. Any tips?

Friday Funny

Hallelujah, it's Friday!

I don't know how you spent your Valentine's Day, but this is one holiday my husband and I aren't big on celebrating. We snuggled and lit the fireplace, and ate heart-shaped carrots. And then returned to our regular evening activities of watching Netflix and geeking out on our computers:

Happy Weekend!

Quick Tip: Protect Your iPad Screen from Messy Hands!

it's easy to protect your iPad from students with slimy hands

Working with preschoolers and early elementary aged-students, there are always those certain few blessings who constantly have a mess on their hands. Whether it's from digging for gold in their nose, or being sick with a cough...When those gooey fingers head toward that iPad screen, this is me (on the inside):

Time is precious and we can't pause to wash hands after every nose swipe. So here's an easy tip for keeping your screen safe from slime:

Slip it in a 3-ring binder that has a protective sleeve on the cover!

The iPad is still sensitive to touch, and it's easy to clean the binder with cleaner when finished.

Plus, the iPad is now tilted at an angle, making for easy viewing and use.

Leave a Comment: What advice do you have for staying healthy during cold/flu season?

I try to take Vitamin C every morning and wash my hands religiously.

Quick and Easy "Anytime" Activity

a quick activity to elicit phonemes at any level

Need a super simple and super easy activity you can pull together on the fly and that works with any student?

Take a sheet of paper or construction paper, draw a line down the middle, and write a couple comparison words across the top. For this student, we were targeting /s/, so my words were "summer" or "not summer". Pick any words that have your target phoneme. Cut apart target pictures and place them in the appropriate column.

This is so simple and quick to make, and can be used in a variety of ways. If working at the word level, just say which column you are putting them in. With my student, we were working at the sentence level, so we said "____ is for summer." or "___ is not for summer." It would also be perfect for students working on categories, sentence formation, and answering questions.

I also made a pocket on the back to store the words in. Sometimes we just glue the pictures on instead. Easy peasy!

Leave a Comment: What is your favorite thing about summer?

I live for temps above 70 degrees!

Valentine's Scratch-Off Cards

fun DIY scratch-off cards that are a nice change for therapy

These scratch-off Valentine cards were so much fun for my students! I found the idea here, and adapted it into an activity to use with my students. They lurved it! And I did too. These take a bit of extra prep work, but are so worth it. NOTE: This packet was updated on February 05, 2015 (details below).

And I already have a ton of the work done for you! This download includes practice sheets for initial and final F, V, K, G, L, S, S-Blends, SH, CH, L, L-Blends, R, R-Blends, Vocalic R, as well as a blank page for you to make your own. There are also color or black and white printing options!

Here's the fun part: they are scratch-off tickets!! Students use a coin to reveal the pictures underneath.

As you can see, the pink paint I used is still pretty see-through, even after 4 coats of paint. I would suggest sticking to metallic acrylic paint colors.

They had a blast! The best part is, they were able to bring their practice sheets home for home practice. For my students with language goals, we used the pictures to formulate sentences, make descriptions, or answer questions.

Try these today...they are too much fun :) P.S. Once the painting was done, I was able to assemble and do all the prep while watching the latest drama unfold on "...the most dramatic season ever" of The Bachelor, so the extra prep work isn't too daunting. ;)

You can find the target words here.

Leave a Comment: Have you ever won big on scratch-off tickets?
I have only had three scratch-off tickets in my life, and they were a graduation gift.
I won zero dollars.
  

You may also enjoy this post: St. Patrick's Day Open-Ended Game Board {FREEBIE}

Graffiti in the Speech Room!

be a rebel: draw on the table in your speech room!

I found this idea on Pinterest (where else?!) and loved it! You can draw/color/write on your table using Sharpie paint pens!

The original post used this idea in place of name plates for her student desks. I used it to:

*tally artic productions

*play tic-tac-toe

*draw pictures of our target artic words, then shake dice and see how many times to produce the word

*make sentences out of the words we drew (we took pics with the iPad to 'save' our work for the future)

*fill-in-the-blank sentence completion

*write answers to multiple choice wh-questions

*draw picture prompts for story comprehension

*doodle as a quick end-of-session reward

To erase the paint, color over it with an Expo dry erase marker and wipe clean with a tissue, or clean with rubbing alcohol (the rubbing alcohol is quicker!)

Leave a comment: Have you ever done real graffiti anywhere? 

Good Reads

another round-up of great articles from the internetz

This article came from a study published by my Alma Mater - the University of Iowa (go Hawkeyes!). Researchers found that varied practice words -- ones that are more varied in the number of consonants, but still teach the same rules as traditional phonics instruction -- results in greater generalization to novel words and non-words by children!

“Variability was good for the low-performing students, it was good for the high-performing students. It was good for the boys, it was good for the girls. It was good for the words, it was good for the non-words,” Apfelbaum says. “Among the students who struggled the most, the kids who weren’t exposed to variation didn’t show any learning at all, while the kids who were exposed to variation did.” 

Another great read I found is this one from Parents.com. The article gives some easy and quick activity ideas for boosting language skills for children with Down Syndrome. These ideas grow with the child from babbling to reading. But really, these are great tips for any child! My favorite idea: Rainbow of Learning :)

The last article I want to share today is about teaching children manners. Sometimes I feel this skill just isn't taught to children anymore. What I love about this article is that it explains what types of manners would be appropriate to teach at various ages -- from sharing as babies and toddlers, to email/text/social media manners for teens.  I'm going to print this one off and have a few copies on hand to send home with parents if they bring up concerns regarding this topic.

Leave a Comment: Any good reads you've found lately?

SLP Philosophy

January can be such a difficult month to stay focused on the job. We're coming off the busyness of the holiday season, fresh from a well-deserved and much-needed holiday break (if you work in a school setting), and, where I'm located, it's COLD outside. Students seem antsy and off-task, meetings are plentiful, and the end of the school year seems too. far. away.

A friend and fellow SLP shared this Speech-Language Pathologist Philosophy on Facebook the other day, and I really liked it and wanted to share it.

I felt re-energized thinking about my job after reading this. I even printed off a copy and hung it up at work. It is beautifully written by Kellie Coldiron Ellis. I hope it helps you remain focused at your job and remember why speech pathology is such a great profession!

Leave a Comment: What helps you stay motivated on the job?

Speech Path

 A road-themed activity my students loved!

Brrrrr! It has been so cold in Iowa the past couple days. Temps below zero overnight and single-digit highs. At least we got a little snow on Sunday because if it's this cold, I would rather there be snow on the ground. Call me crazy.

I was sitting by the fireplace wearing two long-sleeve shirts, fuzzy socks, and snuggling under a blanket trying to stay warm last night when I came across this story-telling path on Pinterest, I immediately loved the idea and knew it was something I could modify and apply with my students who are working on all sorts of different goals.

I took a long piece of bulletin board paper and drew a path down the middle. At one end I wrote START and at the other end I wrote STOP, because I have a lot of students who are working on their /s/ sound.

All of my students were intrigued with our new activity as soon as they walked into the room. And the nice thing about this is that it is open-ended and easy to modify with students of all abilities and goal areas.

LANGUAGE:
*Like the original post, this path is a great idea for addressing story telling, oral narrative skills, and identifying story grammar elements. I set the visual story grammar reminders along the road, students proceeded down the path and collected the elements as they listened to the story, and then at the end of the road they needed to use those visuals to retell the story.

*Sentence Production: I had three piles of cards - People/Animals, Actions, and Locations - and students collected the cards as they walked down the path. At the end of the road they had to use the three cards to make a sentence.

*WH-Questions: I placed WH-questions along the road for students to answer as they traveled down the road.

ARTICULATION:
*For my students working on their phonemes at the single word level, I placed cards with their target sound all along the path. As they walked, they picked up a card and produced the word. If they missed on, they had to start over! For some students I also added point values to the cards. The farther they got down the path, the more points they racked up.

*For students working at the sentence level, we placed three cards with their target sound along the road. Once they collected the cards they used all three of them in one sentence.

FLUENCY:
*Draw a smooth, straight road, and a curvy, bumpy road. Students practice their easy onset speech on the smooth road, and address bumpy speech on the other path.

Leave a Comment: What is your favorite story to use for story retelling?