Phonological Awareness Wizards

introducing a new wizard-themed game for phonological awareness

Abracadabra!

Alacazoom!

Wizards have taken over my speech room!

Phonological Awareness Wizards is a magical new item up in my shop, and my students have been having so much fun with it all week. It includes a game board and everything you need to target phonological awareness skills - we're talking rhyming, syllables, and phonemes. In fact, with this one game board and the 594(!) accompanying playing cards, you are able to target 10 different phonological awareness skills:

RHYMING RECOGNITION

RHYMING DISCRIMINATION

RHYMING PRODUCTION

SYLLABLE IDENTIFICATION

SYLLABLE SEGMENTATION

PHONEME IDENTIFICATION

PHONEME SEGMENTATION

PHONEME DELETION

PHONEME ADDITION

PHONEME MANIPULATION

Deck covers are also included for each set of cards if you wish to use them. The game board comes in two different sizes, and there are also game pawns and a die to coordinate. I cut out the pawns and used binder clips to stand them up - voila!

That's not all - kablam! There are also take-home pages, a progress monitoring rubric, and dot reinforcement pages!

So go ahead, wave your magic wand, and hop on over to pick up this game for your own use. The little wizards you work with will thank you ;) I waved my magic wand and this packet is 40% off until Friday, October 31. Enjoy!

Easter Egg Matchups

I found these cute foam Easter eggs at the Target Dollar Spot a few weeks ago (8-pack for $1), and I have been (impatiently) waiting for April to roll around so I could debut my activity idea!

The foam eggs were pre-cut into halves, which naturally led to some matching activities. I used some clear packing tape to make pockets on each half of the eggs. Cut one piece about an inch longer than the second piece, then match them up sticky sides together. The longer piece will overlap the shorter piece and will be used to attach the "pockets" to the eggs.

Here's how we used these in therapy:

This student was working on final consonant deletion. So we matched up words that have the same phoneme at the end, then practiced making sentences with those words.

matching up opposite pairs

For my articulation students, we played a matching game with our phoneme pictures.

Some students matched up community helpers with their related objects or tools.

And others matched up rhyming words. We practiced making lots of sentences with our targets throughout the day.

This was a fun activity, and we'll be using up until Easter. Let me know if you try it!

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Abby's Mom made her a bunny birthday cake when she was younger because her birthday is around the same time. :)

Appy Hour: Word Mess

review of a fun and challenging app to target vocabulary and visual scanning

Word Mess is a fun app I grabbed when it went free a few months back, and it has tons of potential for use with older students working on vocabulary skills!

The main screen will present you with two options: Challenge or Quick Play. If you choose Challenge, you'll experience all different puzzle types, and try to progress through as many levels as you can without losing a challenge. With Quick Play, you get to choose the type of puzzle you want to play.

There are different types of puzzles, and they all present the user with a screen full of a mess of words...get it? :)

Find the Word: To solve this Word Mess you are given a specific word to find, and you need to tap on all of them as fast as you can. You gotta be fast - the clock is ticking and additional words pop up on the screen if you take too long! In the later levels, bombs appear that scramble the words up.

Category: The Category puzzles really vary in their complexity. Some are as simple as "Find T-Words" and some I was guessing at ("Find English Authors"). These puzzles are fantastic for those kiddos who are working on vocabulary skills such as naming items in categories and synonyms.

Rhymes: These puzzles are really great for boosting those phonemic awareness skills! There are always many words that sound the same but are all spelled differently, like flight, white, and height, which can be really challenging!

Odd One Out: In the Bonus Rounds the challenge is Odd One Out - you need to find the one single word on the screen that is different from all the rest (usually a word that means the opposite) and find it as many times as you can in 60 seconds.

Word Mess is a really fun app that would make some vocabulary learnin' pretty fun for your older students. It's great for targeting vocabulary skills, phonemic awareness, visual tracking, and categories. I have fun playing it myself! At this time, Word Mess is available in the app store for $1.99. Check it out!

Blogiversary Week Mega Giveaway!

we're wrapping up a week of fun with FIVE awesome giveaways

You guys. You GUYS! This has been the most exciting week ever on this blog! It's been a fun few days full of celebration - amazing guest posts, flash freebies over on facebook and twitter, a big TpT sale, and we're not done yet!

In addition to the wonderful guest posts we've enjoyed this week, four of my favorite SLP Bloggers have generously donated prizes to giveaway to you my awesome readers!

First up, we have a great giveaway from Laura over at All Y'All Need. She has generously offered one lucky reader their choice of one bulletin board set! These sets have everything you'll need for your speech rooms this year: behavior charts, labels, bulletin board decor, and much more! They've created so many great themed sets lately, such as Pirates:

and I personally love the Chalkboard and Brights set:

You can see her other sets here. Enter the rafflecopter below to win a bulletin board set of your choice!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Mia from Putting Words in Your Mouth has also donated an amazing resource. Monsters Phonics University is just what SLPs need to teach important phonemic awareness skills such as beginning/middle/ending sounds, rhyming, and blending sounds. All with a fun Monsters theme!

You can read more about the Monsters Phonics University here. Enter the rafflecopter below to win this resource for yourself!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Kristin from Simply Speech has also donated one of her amazing products! Articulation Game Show is such a fun way to target /sh/, /ch/, /th/, /s/, and /r/ sounds. The game features a variety of challenging tasks and point values to make articulation practice more fun!

You can read more about Articulation Game Show here. Enter the rafflecopter below to win this resource for yourself!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Carrie from Carrie's Speech Corner already shared an amazing guest post and freebie earlier this week, and now she's also generously giving away one of her best products! Receptive Detectives is great for targeting receptive language skills by having students solve the clues to figure out the target picture. The packet is also wonderful for targeting vocabulary. There are multiple ways to use this packet, and the download also includes a game board AND blank cards so you can keep expanding the game.

You can read more about Receptive Detectives here. Enter the rafflecopter below to win this resource for yourself!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Finally, I am giving one lucky reader my entire TpT store! Yep, every product! This includes Pocket Categories, Itty-Bitty Articulation Books, and more!

You can browse all products here. Enter the rafflecopter below for a chance to win everything in my store!

Good luck everyone! I'll announce the winners on Sunday. Oh, and the fun's not over yet. I have a couple more posts planned to end the week. There will be some fun surprises for Twitter followers all day today too. And don't forget - all items in my TpT store are 20% off through Saturday!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good Finds: 5-Minute Quick Quiz Word Fun

Happy Labor Day! I am enjoying my extra day off of work. It's crazy how ready I was to have a day off after just 3 weeks of the new job. I guess all the business of organizing, meeting new people, scheduling students, and attending countless new staff trainings just drains a girl's energy! It has been much appreciated having a long weekend :)

I found another Good Find for SLPs the other day. Remember, the Dollar Aisle at Target is a great resource for inexpensive supplies and ideas.

Today's find was this 5-Minute Quick Quiz - Word Fun Challenge.

It's a small flip-book with a great assortment of quick activities that target language skills. Each page targets a different skills: word families, phonemic awareness, vocabulary building...and more!

Here are a few previews of what's inside:

Use the provided word family list to fill-in-the-blanks of the story.

Unscramble the letters in these mixed-up words!

Each column is a category, and you need to use the letters on the left to think of a word that starts with that letter and fits in the given categories - like Scattegories.

Manipulate the phonemes to figure out each word.

Use the clues to figure out which word on the list is being described.

The answers are all on the bottom of each page. For only $1, I thought this was a great bargain that I couldn't pass up. The cover says Grade 2, but with some modifications, I could even use it with the Kindergarteners and 1st Graders I work with. I plan to rip the pages apart and use my new dry-erase page protectors so I can use this book again and again!

P.S. There was also a math version!

Alphabet Bingo and Other Good Finds

I love stopping at the dollar aisle every time I go to Target (which happens a lot more frequently since I moved to a larger city with multiple Target stores!). It is a great place to find inexpensive supplies for crafts, books, office supplies, organization tools, wrapping paper, and more. This time of year it is always stocked full of back to school and teacher supplies. So much great stuff! This week I picked up some bulletin board borders:

a desk organizer:

small pocket charts:

a couple paper pockets that allow my students to write on with dry-erase markers (cut back on printing!):

...and this Alphabet Bingo game:

I am so excited about it! This year I am assigned to an elementary school where I will be serving PreK, Kindergarten, and First Grade. I am super excited to use this with some of my students. The game comes with eight different bingo boards, 42 cards with various alphabet tasks, and 70 bingo markers.

The cards are pretty neat. To play the game, the "caller" will draw a card, read the clue, and the players locate the appropriate answer on their bingo boards.

For some of the cards, kids need to identify the missing letter in a string of the alphabet. Most of the cards have kids identifying initial, medial, or final letters in words, or you could modify it to have the identify the letter that says the initial, medial, or final sounds in words.

It will be a great way to target some letter-sound correspondence, letter naming, phonemic awareness, early literacy skills, following directions, turn-taking, and more. Who doesn't love playing bingo??

Leave a Comment: What is the one store you could not live without?

Easy for me to answer: TARGET hands down!