Flexible St. Patrick's Day Activities

these St. Patrick's Day activities can easily target various speech goals

St. Patrick's Day is on Sunday, and we began celebrating in my speech room this week. Today we did a few activities that are easily adaptable for different goal areas.

This bingo dauber page was the perfect reinforcement to have on hand. My artic students were able to make a dot after each correct phoneme production. We had races to see who could fill their shamrock up first. Other students raced me! If they produced their sound in error, I got to make a dot instead of them :) Gotta keep thing interesting!

Another great articulation activity that targets /l/ is this Lucky Leprechauns game from If Only I Had Super Powers. It is so cute and my students thought it was hilarious. I also used it with some of my language kiddos, forming sentences to describe the pictures or explaining why it is a funny picture. Go download this game - it's a freebie!

And of course, an open-ended board game is something that can be used with all students. You can download my free game here!

For most students, a discussion of some sort occurred about what St. Patrick's Day is...why clovers and horseshoes are lucky...where leprechauns live...Early elementary students are so entertaining to work with! Be sure to check back for more St. Patrick's Day activities throughout this week.

Leave a Comment: What is your favorite holiday?

For me, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year!

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One Last Dr. Seuss Speech Activity

one last Dr. Seuss activity to end our week of celebration

 
I hope you have enjoyed our Dr. Seuss celebration this week. Dr. Seuss was so creative with his stories and characters that there's no way not to have fun with his books.

Today's activity hint was "look around" - did you figure out what that meant?? I hid a Cat in the Hat picture in my room. If my students spotted the hidden Cat in the Hat, they won a truffula tree!

I "borrowed" this idea from a Kindergarten teacher in the building. Love them!

The Kindergarten and First Grade classes in my building are having Dr. Seuss activities in their classes all afternoon. Love the creativity and fun that Dr. Seuss inspires! Time to start planning for next year!

(P.S. There are so many great resources and ideas at www.seussville.com if you need some inspiration.)

Leave a Comment: Who is your favorite Dr. Seuss character?

You may also enjoy these related posts:

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Dr. Seuss Activities, Part 2

Friday Funny

Wheeeee - it's FRIDAY!

Thanks to Simply Speech for sharing this one. Happy Weekend!

Dr. Seuss Speech Activities, Part 2!

more Dr. Seuss themed activities from my speech room

If you read Tuesday's Dr. Seuss post, you read the hint for today: think green, red, and blue.

Hint #1: think red and blue: Have you read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish? It is such the perfect book for PreK/early elementary students. Color words, describing words, opposites - my kiddos loved it! After we read the book, we did a "speechy" activity by making red and blue fish using their own hands.

this kiddo wanted to use googly eyes :)

While the students were cutting out their traced hands, we practiced their speech words. After the fish were glued to the background paper, we wrote their target words on the 'fins'. Cute!

If you couldn't tell, that's a T-Rex on the blue fish :)

Love the detail added to these fish!
We wrote his speech words on the back :)

Hint #2: think green: So, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Dr. Seuss and the color green? Why, Green Eggs and Ham of course!

I made my own version of green eggs - a green eggs vocabulary match-up! This document targets synonyms and antonyms. You can download it in my TpT store.

Simply cut apart the egg whites and the yolks, then match the yolks to the corresponding whites. I laminated mine and added Velcro to stick them together.

We are adding one last Dr. Seuss activity to my speech room tomorrow, so check back again! Hint: "look around"

Leave a Comment: Who is your favorite author?

You may also enjoy these related posts:
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!
One Last Dr. Seuss Speech Activity
Pocket Categories Sorting Game

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

a roundup of Dr. Seuss activities from my speech room this week

Saturday was Theodor Seuss Geisel's birthday! Who?? The amazing man the world came to know as...Dr. Seuss! He is one of my favorite authors and one of the most creative brains of literary history (in my opinion). Unfortunately, between three snow days last week and a 1:00 dismissal another day for parent-teacher conferences, there just wasn't much time for activities in my speech room. So, we are celebrating this week! Here's a look at what we had fun with today:

What's a Dr. Seuss celebration without something Cat in the Hat themed? An empty oatmeal container makes an excellent striped hat! This idea is courtesy of Motherhood and Other Adventures.

oatmeal container + construction paper + paper plate

Oh my word, the kiddos loved this! We'll definitely be bringing this out more than just once a year :)

Tossing our Webber Artic cards into the Dr. Seuss hat.

**************************************************************************

Continuing with the pocket-themed activities from a couple weeks ago, we did an activity based on There's a Wocket in my Pocket. I found this idea from A Place Called Kindergarten and I loved it!

I picked up some adhesive-backed library pockets from the local teacher supply store, and printed off a quick sheet to stick it to. My students cut apart pictures from Mommy Speech Therapy and we practiced putting their target words in the sentence. Fun! Made for great homework practice too :)

More to come tomorrow! Hint, think green, red, and blue.

Leave a Comment: What is your favorite Dr. Seuss book?

I love Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? and I'm pretty
sure I learned to read from Dr. Seuss' ABCs

You may also enjoy these related activities:
Dr. Seuss Speech Activities, Part 2
One Last Dr. Seuss Speech Activity
Protect Your iPad Screen from Messy Hands

New Downloads in a New Store

Schoolhouse Talk now has a Teachers Pay Teachers store

I've recently added a few new documents to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. What? You didn't know Schoolhouse Talk had a TpT store?! Well it's relatively new, but all my documents from the blog are on there now :) You can check it out here. There's a handy button over there below my profile ----> :)

This weekend I updated and added the following downloads to the store:

This scheduling document allows teachers to let you know what times would work or wouldn't work for you to pull students from their room for speech sessions. It's an updated version of the one I wrote about back in September. It's FREE and you can download it here.

And this one allows you to notify teachers when the students in their class are scheduled for therapy. It's also FREE! Click here to grab it!

This one's a new one - Speech Passes! I'm going to use these for the articulation kiddos I pull into the hallway for 5-minute sessions. I'll let teachers know that I'll quietly walk into the classroom, place a pass on a student's desk, and the student will then leave to meet me in the hallway. That way, the class doesn't get interrupted when I need to borrow a student. There are four different styles and they all fit on one page. Get your own here.

Check out my store for all these products and more!

Friday Funny

Hope this brightens your day and starts the weekend off with a laugh!

P.S. Cats are hilarious :)

{FREEBIE} Progress Report Templates

three templates to use for your spring progress reports

 
It's parent-teacher conferences week here at my school district. That makes two long days of working until 8:00pm, but I enjoy the face-to-face time with parents. What I don't enjoy is the work it takes to prepare all the progress reports for parents! I have 53 students currently on my caseload and need to update their graphs and write a progress note for each of their goals.

There's a progress report template on our Web IEP, but it's a little cumbersome for parents to read, especially if the student also has non-speech IEP goals.

I decided to create my own progress report document to make it a little more interesting for parents to read, and to be more fun for me to fill out.

Feel free to download your own progress report forms here! Make sure you become a follower to receive updates about new downloads and freebies. I have some new and exciting projects in the works!

Leave a Comment: How many students and what ages do you work with?

I have 53 students on IEPs, and 8 others with whom I'm running short-term interventions. 

 I'm fortunate to work with my favorite ages - preschool (3+), Kindergarten, and 1st grade!

You may also like this post: Data Keeping (with free download)

Pocket Categories Sorting Game

a sorting activity to increase vocabulary and language skills

 
Other than a couple free iPad apps, I don't have much in the way of activities to target categories/sorting. So I made my own!

This packet includes 17 pages and targets five simple preschool categories: shapes, insects, vegetables, jungle animals, and fruits. The pocket graphics are from Ashley Hughes.

There is a sorting mat with a pocket for each category. Laminate and cut apart the picture cards, then students can put the cards in the appropriate pocket.

There are also individual sorting mats for each category. If working with a group, assign students each a category mat and then they can either ask for the picture cards that would go with their category, or draw a picture card and give it to the student with the correct sorting mat.

Also included are two sentence/question strips. Place a picture and a pocket in the appropriate {slots} and then practice reading the sentences. When I made this activity, I had in mind a student of mine who has a goal to increase sentence length to 4+ words. These will be perfect for her.

Finally, there are also two types of flash cards included...12 target naming items in categories, and 24 target naming categories for specific items. These flash cards do not have picture prompts and target some categories that are not targeted by the picture cards.

I hope you and your students enjoy this packet. You can download it here.

You might also enjoy this post: Easy "Anytime, Anywhere" Activity

Friday Funny

  this is the funniest website any SLP will ever read

If you haven't discovered whatshouldwecallSLPschool yet, then you are missing out! Just try to read through the posts without snort-laughing your face off :) A sampling:

"How I look when I use tactile cues to try to stimulate a sound"

"When I manage to sneakily work on a kid's goals during free play"
p.s. I love Ron Swanson :)

"When a kid farts on me while I have him on my lap"

Visit whatshouldwecallSLPschool for more laughs!