Halloween Language Tricks and Treats

spice up your language therapy with these spooky Halloween activities

The Frenzied SLPs are back! This time we are sharing Halloween Tricks and Tips for Language :) Your therapy room will be loaded with fun, just in time for Halloween on Saturday! I started using Halloween activities in my room last week, and here's what has been successful.

Green Ooze! This was a super fun project that I was able to complete with a couple students last week, and will use with the rest of my older students this week. It's a great activity for following directions, sequencing, and making descriptions about the texture, smell, feel, and behavior of the ooze. If you'd like to make your own, here's an instruction sheet with visuals that I put together. This was so. much. FUN!

For the past couple years I've made a masking tape spider web on the floor during the week of Halloween. This is a reinforcement game students can play while they practice any therapy goal. I added point pumpkins and ghosts throughout the web and had students toss glow-in-the-dark spiders. If the spiders hit or land on any pumpkin or the ghost, students get that many points. So easy and simple, but the kiddos LOVE it.

Another perfect activity for this time of year is Ned's Head! My students can't get enough of this gross game and all the disgusting items packed inside Ned's noggin. I love to use this game to talk about making thorough descriptions of objects. We talk about the features of all the items inside - size, shape, soft/hard, does it have legs, will it be flat or bumpy, etc. We also look at the cards first and predict how those items will feel so they can be more successful at picking out their object.

S.L.A.P. for Halloween: I created this packet so I could use it with every language goal on my caseload - following directions, inferences, vocabulary, synonyms/antonyms/multiple meaning words, categories, plural nouns, past-tense verbs, story sequencing, compare/contrast, barrier game - it's loaded! Bonus - it's almost completely black and white printing!

These Sentences are Scaaary: This is a semantic absurdities packet, and my students have loooved it this year! Each student gets a sorting mat, then they draw a card and correct the semantic error in the sentence. If they get it correct, they can add the card to their mat. First student to fill up their entire mat is the winner!

Spooky Spiders Halloween Words: Need some seasonal vocabulary ideas? This packet has lots of great new Halloween words to learn, and they are sorted by phoneme in case you have some articulation students in your groups. I've been helping students look up the definition of their card, then they have to teach the rest of the group what their word means. Sometimes we draw definitions of our words on the back of the cards. You can also put the cards in a pile and play an open-ended game.

Build a Monster Play-Doh Mats (from The Speech Bubble SLP): My preschoolers and early elementary kiddos had a blast with this one. It's great for following directions, number sense, identifying colors, basic concepts, and body parts.

Apps: Don't forget apps - there are so many great ones! I especially love Mask Jumble Halloween, SagoMini Monsters, Millie's Book of Tricks and Treats, and Parents Magazine Carve-A-Pumpkin.

Thanks so much to Doyle Speech Works , Twin Speech Language & Literacy LLC, and All Y'all Need for hosting this linky. If you'd like to add your own ideas, feel free to join using the link below. The linky will run through October 30th. Happy Halloween!

An InLinkz Link-up

No-Prep Speech Therapy Activities

quick & minimal-prep activities for the busy SLP

Tis the season - for high stakes standardized testing! My district has spent the past five weeks completing state assessments followed by MAP testing. (Too much testing! But that's a whole different post...) Now, with the end of the school year quickly approaching, we're looking at special activities, field trips, music programs, awards banquets, and class events. What does this mean for me? Reduced time with students, modified schedules, proctoring tests, and trying to fit in make-up therapy sessions. Time is limited. What's an SLP to do?

Here are my top 10 favorite go-to activities when prep time is short and I still want to make the most of time with my students. The majority of these things are always ready and I can just grab-and-go.

For PreK-2nd grade:

1. Magnet Wands/Dot Pages - easy to complete while practicing any therapy goal; dot pages can turn into colorful works of art for students to take home
Recommendation: Chipper Chat

2. Flash Cards: not just for drill - play a matching game, hide cards around the room for students to find, students keep the cards if they say their target correctly and SLP keeps the cards if they don't, etc.

3. iPad Apps - kids will willingly do the same activity on the iPad that they refused to do with flash cards five minutes ago
Recommendations: Toca Boca, Lego Junior Create & Cruise, My PlayHome

4. Marble Maze - great fun for following directions, reviewing basic concepts, and building language skills

5. Board Games - who doesn't love adding in a little competition to therapy?!
Recommendations: Candy Land, Cariboo, Pop the Pig

6. Garbage Pails - pick one up at the dollar store; it's so satisfying for students to "throw away" cards or objects they have completed

7. Speech/Language Path - walk down the path and collect articulation targets, or story elements, or build sentences as you go

8. Picture Books - so many options available and you can always incorporate speech and language goals
Recommendation: wordless picture books; use book companions

9. Bubbles - they are my secret trick to get shy preschoolers to interact with me
Recommendation: buy Billion Bubbles solution - it lives up to its name!

10. Building Blocks - fun for all ages and you can target almost any speech/language goal

For 3rd-8th grade:

1. Magnet Wands/Dot Pages - these provide numerous practice opportunities and it's just so satisfying to use the magnet and collect all those colorful chips
Recommendations: free 100 challenges by Peachie Speechie

2. Barrier Games - so many language opportunities here; also great for carryover of articulation skills

3. QR Codes - students adore scanning those magical pixelated boxes
Recommendations: QR inference cards; SpeechBook from Speech Bubble SLP

4. Dry Erase Board: students love drawing on these. Draw Venn diagrams for compare/contrast activities, create word webs with vocabulary words

5. Hangman - you can easily incorporate academic vocabulary terms or spelling words

6. Board Games - serve as an excellent tool to make mundane therapy activities more fun
Recommendations: Jenga, Don't Spill the Beans, Connect 4, Guess Who, Apples to Apples Jr.

7. Write on the Table - use dry erase markers or paint pens; easy way to "keep points" for any activity. Students are blown away that they get to draw on the table!

8. iPad Apps - apps are super motivating, and with structure and guidance they really do serve as helpful therapy tools.
Recommendations: Bluster, Story Wheel, Classify It!, World's Worst Pet, Phonics Studio

9. Interactive Websites - because anything involving technology can't possibly be work, right? ;)
Recommendations: Make Beliefs Comix, Scholastic Story Starters, Newsela, Readworks

10. YouTube - pair with graphic organizers to discuss story elements, sequence events, make inferences/predictions, etc.
Recommendations: Simon's Cat videos; Speech Tube from Speech Room News

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What are your go-to no prep activities when you're short on time? Any recommendations for high school grades?

Guest Blog Post: Building Blocks in Speech

Note: This post originally appeared on the Twin Sisters Speech and Language Therapy blog on May 29th, 2014. Thanks for reading!

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Big props to Shanda and Manda for allowing me to guest post for them today! Those two girls have wonderfully creative ideas, so I am thrilled to add to the mix.

With our hectic school schedules, sometimes we have to provide therapy "on the fly". I was thinking last week about my therapy sessions, and I found myself going back to Lego/Duplo blocks again and again as my go-to "grab and go" therapy item. My current assignment is working with early intervention (birth to 3) as well as preschool-aged children, and these little blocks of joy are perfect for bringing communication opportunities and fun to our time together.

What can I target with Lego/Duplo blocks?

You can target so, so much with building blocks! Here's a sampling of what I've done with them:

*Basic Concepts: talk about the colors of the blocks; the number of "bumps" they have; discuss the attributes of the blocks (long, short, skinny, large, etc.); build different shapes or letters out of the blocks; talk about which blocks they need first, next, and last
 
*Emerging Language Skills: Legos provide the perfect opportunity for students to practice requests: more, block please, my turn, more blue, I'm all done, etc.

*Turn-Taking and Pronouns: Some of my preschoolers have a behavior goal for turn-taking. Building blocks are also perfect practice for this as you work together to build a masterpiece. We also get tons of opportunities to practice pronouns: my turn, your turn, we go at the same time, his turn, you do it, I need help, etc.

*Prepositions: up, down, around, bottom, top, inside, through, first, last - they're all covered here!

*Following Directions: You can instruct your kiddos how to build something with the blocks, or have them practice telling each other directions. Since the building pieces are different colors and shapes, it's perfect for adding describing words to your sentences: "Put the long red piece on top of the short purple piece." You can also download building plans such as this one online. Instead of printing them off, I just display them on my laptop or iPad for students to reference.

*Articulation: I have my articulation students practice their target sounds a designated number of times before they can earn more blocks to use. I've also attached their target pictures to the blocks and had them practice as they build. (By the way, this adhesive is such a time and money saver for temporarily attaching pictures! So much better than Velcro!)

Another favorite Lego activity of mine is the Lego Read & Build kits. These neat little activities come with a book and all the Legos you need for building the characters inside the book.

I have this farm set, but there are also caterpillar, fairy tale, jungle, and vehicles sets that I've seen. They are great for little ones and the pages show them exactly how to assemble each item. These are great for traveling SLPs because they are compact and contain only the specific blocks you need for that book.

Finally, if I don't want to lug around a set of Lego blocks as I travel from site to site, I always can count on the Lego Juniors Create & Cruise app to help me out. It is a wonderful and FREE app that I recommend to all the parents and teachers I work with. Students get to build their own Lego car (great for targeting language goals as they describe the car they want to build!), and then drive it while they earn additional game pieces! This one is a must-have app and it is definitely a favorite of all my students :)

Thanks so much for reading! I hope I've inspired you to "build" some fun into your therapy sessions!

Love It & List It - Fave Technology

my top 4 favorite forms of technology for use in speech therapy

I'm linking up with Speech Room News again this month for her Love It & List It link-up. This month's topic is favorite technology. Here's what I use and love in my speech room.

1) iPad

I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here, because the iPad and apps are EVERYWHERE, but it is truly the number one piece of technology I use every day. Obviously there are tons of apps out there which are great for use in the speech room, but the iPad goes way beyond apps too.

It's a timer.

It's a search engine.

It's a voice recorder.

It's a tv.

It's a secret decoder.

It's a library.

It's a fun game.

It's a writing tool.

It's a flash drive.

It's a scanner.

It's therapy-on-the-go.

It's all that and more. I am so fortunate that my employer also sees its value and is willing to provide me with one. Now, if only I could triple the amount of memory available :)

BTW, I was supplied a case with attached bluetooth keyboard by my employer, which is great for writing reports on the go, but I'm looking for something less clunky sans keyboard for everyday use. What's your favorite iPad case? Let me know in the comments please.

2) Boardmaker Plus
 

Need a visual schedule for a student? Boardmaker. Need a token board to keep a student on task? Boardmaker. Need pages for a communication device? Boardmaker. Need a sheet of words containing target speech sounds for progress monitoring? Boardmaker. Need to write a social story? Boardmaker. It's such a versatile tool, and I use it all the time. Be sure to check out Boardmaker Share and Boardmaker Achieve to download ready-made activities from other users! Again, I am so very grateful to have this provided to me by my employer.

3) Voice Recorders

The top two I use are Quick Voice (on the iPad) and Audacity (on my laptop). They are both free to download, and perfect for taking language samples, screening a student, and recording story retell trials. I like Audacity on my MacBook Pro because I can turn it on and then tilt the screen down until almost closed so the student isn't distracted by the recording. However, I'm almost always working with students in their classroom or in the hallway and don't drag my laptop along, so I use Quick Voice on the iPad the most. Check it out!

4) Social Media

This isn't really something I use directly in therapy, but social media is definitely something that affects the activities I'm doing in therapy! Pinterest is overflowing with amazing therapy ideas! I have connected with a whole bunch of SLPs on Twitter and love using it to find information about current research and upcoming events. But my favorite right now is Instagram. It's such a great tool for connecting and interacting with other SLPs and I find a ton of great ideas from the creative people I interact with. I don't know what I'd do without these tools!

Schoolhouse Talk on Instagram

Schoolhouse Talk on Pinterest

Schoolhouse Talk on Twitter

Schoolhouse Talk on Facebook

So there you have it! My favorite technology tools for speech. What do you like to use? Go check out what other tools SLPs are using!

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Abby wishes there were 30 hours in a day so she could catch up on everything.

Basketball Bonanza! {freebies + activity roundup}

a round-up of basketball-themed activities, apps, books, and games for your speech room

It's tournament time! The NCAA men's basketball tournament is here (and the women's tournament is just around the corner)! Now, I don't follow basketball. At all. But I still filled out a bracket. I have just as good a chance as anybody, right? Who's going to win it all?! No idea. I picked Florida, but my husband says that won't happen. All I know is that the team I root for didn't even make the tournament. There's always next year! You can have some basketball fun in your speech room with my newest freebie!

Basketball Bonanza

This year I have a versatile activity with a basketball theme - Basketball Bonanza! This one has eight cards for each of the following phonemes: CH/SH (together), R, S, L, K/G (together), F (48 cards total).

There are also bonus and penalty cards included to make things more interesting. All the target words are basketball-themed, so besides great articulation practice, you can also use them to target vocabulary, expanding expressive language, or creating sentences.

Activity Ideas:
Spread the cards out on the floor, then toss beanbags onto the cards. Whichever one it lands on is the target students practice. Look out for the bonus points or missed shot cards! You can also play it on the table top, shuffle in the foil cards, and have students draw a card to practice. They can keep their card if they answer correctly, but have to put it back if their production isn't accurate. Whatever you do, have fun!

Download Basketball Bonanza for free here.

Speech Sound Word Brackets

I also have another basketball-themed activity! I made these speech phoneme word brackets last year, and they are a hit! The full packet targets 21 different speech sounds, but you can download the P, B, M, H brackets for FREE! Please leave feedback and follow my shop if you download :)

Now, onto the basketball apps, books, and games roundup!

Basketball Activity Roundup

Free Apple Apps:

Arcade Hoops Basketball (by Skyworks) - Just like the arcade games; make as many baskets as you can before the clock runs out.

 US Basketball HD (by YOMEN, Inc.) - Choose American landmarks to play at. Try to make as many baskets as you can before time runs out. Bonus points for hitting airplanes, blimps, and birds.

 Slam Dunk Basketball (by VisualDreams) - Score as many points as you can; earn bonus points for various tricks. I'm terrible at this game, but I can't stop trying to beat my score.

 Slam Dunk King (by PikPok) - Earn points for as many slam dunks as you can get in the given time, while swatting away the bombs. Unlock new tricks to score more points.

Free Android Apps:

Basketball Shot (by Top Casual Games) - just like the arcade games

Basketball Shots 3D (by Creative Mobile Games) - pretty realistic looking; try to make baskets from designated spots on the court.

Books (ages 3-5):

My Basketball Book

Little Basketball

Slam Dunk!

Books (ages 5+):

The Best of Everything Basketball Book - learn facts and history about the sport through the years

Salt in His Shoes - written by Michael Jordan's mom and sister; the story tells how Michael Jordan dreamed of becoming a basketball star and overcame obstacles to do so. The illustrations are also great.

Jimmy's Boa and the Bungee Jump Slam Dunk - Jimmy's pet boa is at it again, this time on the basketball court.

J is for Jump Shot: A Basketball Alphabet - learn history, vocabulary, and facts about basketball as you read your way through the alphabet

Games and Toys:

Over-the-Door Hoop - great for a quick reward at the end of a session. Or incorporate goal practice in before they can take a shot.

Table-Top Basketball - this mini version is perfect for therapy on-the-go.

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I'm linking up with Speechie Freebies this week! Click on over to their blog and grab a whole lot of other free downloads. Enjoy!

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Abby learned that basketball was not the sport for her in 4th grade when she stole the ball from her own teammate without realizing it.

Love It and List It - Articulation Apps

 my favorite articulation apps to use with preschoolers

Who's ready to party?! I am linking up again with Speech Room News' Love It and List It party this month. The theme is "Articulation Apps", so here are the top apps I use to address those tricky phonemes with my preschool caseload!

1) Articulation Station Pro

Why I love it: Articulation Station Pro is definitely my go-to app for my articulation students. I use it every. single. day. This app has beautiful pictures, you can create student profiles and save scores for each student. I love, love, love that I can select multiple students and multiple sounds at the same time and the app will track the scores for each person and each sound for me.

Articulation Station allows you to practice phonemes at the word level (flashcards or matching game), sentence level (rotating sentences uses the same sentence, but the target word changes; or you can choose to have unique sentences for each turn), or the paragraph level. Whatever level you are practicing at, select if you want to practice your phonemes in the initial, medial, or final positions (or mixed).

Another great thing is instead of buying the full app, you can purchase specific phonemes individually, which is a great option that I recommend for my families who only need to practice one or two sounds.

Articulation Station Pro is currently available in the app store for $49.99 at the time of this posting. Phonemes can also be purchased individually instead of buying the entire app.


2) Speech Sounds on Cue

Why I love it: Speech Sounds on Cue first shows you with a video how to produce your selected phoneme. Then it proceeds through a short phrase three times. The first time, the entire phrase is modeled for the student, with a video playing a sample production of the target word. The second reading, the video plays the target word (no sound).

The third time, the video is gone and the student says the word, with the student's production recorded and played back. This app is great for targeting single words or working into that phrase/sentence level. I love the feedback it gives, and you can even select multiple phonemes to work on simultaneously.

Speech Sounds on Cue is currently available for $23.99 in the app store at the time of this posting.

3) Phonics Studio

Why I love it: Ohmigoodness, where do I start? Um, how about the option to add student profiles, plus a scoring feature that calculates percent accuracy and saves scores in that student's profile?

Or how about the fact the app allows you to record your students' productions and play them back for you to critique? Not enough for you?

What if I told you that Phonics Studio not only contains pictures for each letter of the alphabet plus vowels, but also allows you to customize by adding your own pictures and recordings as needed?! Need more convincing? Phonics Studio is completely FREE! Wheee! It's so great!

When you're finished practicing, save your scores and email them to parents! This app is a MUST HAVE!

Phonics Studio is currently available for FREE in the app store at the time of this posting.

4) Multiple Choice Articulation

Why I love it: The questions and options given in this app are so funny, and a little gross at times, which make for lots of laughs and silly practice in the speech room. This app is great for carryover as the questions elicit more of a conversational response than just a single word. This app targets /s, z, r, l, sh, ch, th/. You can read my full review here.

Multiple Choice Articulation is currently available for $4.99 in the app store at the time of this posting.

5) Make Dice Lite

Why I love it: This app is great because you can customize it and make as many dice as you need:

You can use up to six dice at once, so with my articulation kiddos I will select their phoneme dice plus a number dice, then they have to say their words that many times. Read my full review here.

Make Dice Lite is currently available for FREE in the app store at the time of this posting. There is also a full version which allows you to add pictures to the dice. It is available for $2.99 at this time.

6) Bamba Ice Cream/Toca Hair Salon

    

Why I love them: My students are constantly requesting to play both of these apps, and along the way I've discovered that they are both loaded with words that contain /s/, /sh/, and /s/ blends! Why not let your students think they are playing while you sneakily have them work on their target phonemes? Mwahahaha! You can read more in this post about how I've used Toca Hair Salon for articulation practice.

Bamba Ice Cream is currently available for FREE in the app store at the time of this posting.
Toca Hair Salon is currently available for $2.99 in the app store at the time of this posting. There are two versions: Toca Hair Salon and Toca Hair Salon 2.

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So there you have it! My favorite apps to use for articulation with my preschoolers! What do you like to use?

Now, go check out what other articulation apps SLPs are using!