snowflake snowmen make a perfect craftivity for winter months
The snowman with the green background is "on a football field" :)
Last week we made snowflake snowmen in my therapy room, and I LOVE how they turned out!
I was inspired by this post I saw on Pinterest. You probably already have everything you need to make these: construction paper, scissors, a pencil, glue sticks, a white crayon, and some markers.
It usually took 20-30 minutes to complete these, depending on the size of the group. I had the paper folded and ready to cut ahead of time, and helped most of my students cut through the thick folded paper. We were also able to target many skills including sequencing, making requests, making descriptions, following directions, fine motor skills, and predicting how their cuts would appear once the paper was unfolded. Articulation students were able to practice their target sounds in between steps.
I was surprised how many of my students were vocally excited about making these. There were a few I thought I'd have to convince to participate, but they were some of the most enthusiastic and most creative! Many of them had never made paper snowflakes, and they thought it was so magical unfolding the paper to reveal their snowflake. Try them today with your students!
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Abby enjoyed 40*F weather this weekend. It felt like spring! What's the weather like where you live?
get ready for the holidays with recipes, crafts, and therapy activities
It's the most wonderful time of the year! Here in North Dakota we have a little dusting of snow on the ground, and it's really starting to feel festive around here. The Frenzied SLPs are back to get you in the holiday spirit with a link-up of Holiday Goodies for you :D
I can NOT wait for Thanksgiving next week - extra time with family, a couple days off of work to relax, and don't forget the yum-o food! I'd like to share a recipe with you that my family traditionally only makes for the holidays.
Krumkake is a Scandinavian dessert that my family makes every single Christmas. You do need a special iron to cook these on, similar to a waffle iron. This is the type of iron I use (not an affiliate link). After baking the batter in the iron, you roll the delicate disc into a cone shape and let it cool. Then it becomes a delicious, sweet, crispy treat. In my family, we eat these plain, although I've seen pictures of them dusted with powdered sugar or filled with whipped cream.
What else does the holiday season mean to me? Lots of homemade crafts and gifts! A couple years ago I made all my nieces and nephews (that's 13 total!) homemade bookmarks for Christmas gifts.
(source) I made monster ones for the boys, and scalloped edges for the girls using this pattern. Since then I've made more for myself and have also used them for Secret Santa at work. Quick, easy to personalize, and they go along with my love of reading. They would also be an excellent therapy activity/gift for your students. Win-win-win-win :)
Need a Thanksgiving-themed craft for your students or family celebration? This Thankfulness Wreath was so heartwarming to make last year at school. I simply cut out a basic leaf shape in a variety of fall colors, students wrote the things they are thankful for in metallic markers, then we pinned them to a styrofoam wreath form and hung it outside my therapy room. I can't wait to make another one with my students this week!
Finally, don't forget about holiday-themed fun in your therapy room. The following activities can be found in my shop:
And the 2015 edition of the Gifts of Gab Holiday ebook is hot off the presses! It's packed full of FREEBIES and fabulous therapy resources from over 70 #SLPBloggers! Download your copy here and you'll be fully prepared for the upcoming busy holiday season.
Thanks so much to Sparklle SLP, Speech Universe, and SLP Runner for hosting this Holiday Goodies linky! If you'd like to add your own ideas, feel free to join using the link below. Blessings to each and every one of you for reading!
It's that time of year once again! Time to spread cheer, eat lots of goodies, spend extra special time with family and friends, and enjoy the sounds and sights of the holidays! I hope this little diddy gets you in a festive mood. It's one of my favorites to listen to every year!
enjoy this free winter game for use with any of your students
Winter is beginning to rear its ugly head around here, and while I strongly dislike the cold temperatures, I love how peaceful and cozy the falling snow feels. It makes me so excited for Thanksgiving time with family, and then all the fun and good cheer that comes with the holiday season. I can't wait!
I just posted a new forever freebie in my shop, and it goes right along with the winter weather. This one is an open-ended card game which can be used with any group of students. As students work on their learning goals, they take turns picking a penguin card. Whoever collects the most points at the end of the game is the winner!
a review of Just a Snowman book companion from Let's Talk
Well, that groundhog predicted winter will never, ever, ever end, and he was right! We're in the midst of a blizzard as I type. School let out early Tuesday due to the snow, and a Wednesday snow day is pending today school is cancelled thanks to 6 inches of snow. I did get a couple days this week, thankfully, to use this book companion from Whitney over at Let's Talk with my students, and it is great!
Just a Snowman, by Mercer Mayer, is such a wonderful book for preschoolers during the winter time. It's full of winter vocabulary and activities, adorable Little Critter pictures, and it's not too long in length. Whitney creates super great book companions, and I especially love her Just a Snowman packet for my preschoolers. Here's what we did with her activities:
There are two versions of story comprehension questions included in the packet: one version with picture choices, and one without. For my preschoolers, we used the questions with picture choices. These were easy to use as during-story questions (see above), or as recall questions after the story was over. Tip: Write the page number the question cards coordinate with for easy sorting.
There are also picture cards included for detailed story sequencing, which makes it easy to adjust tasks for each student's ability level. For instance, I used just three pictures for one of my kiddos so she could unscramble and identify beginning, middle, and ending events:
A sorting activity targets winter clothes and summer clothes:
I did end up drawing a sun and a snowflake onto the sorting mats to help my littles out remembering the difference between summer and winter. Tip: attach to a file folder and laminate for easy storage/use. The clothing items were also great for targeting vocabulary. There was a regional vocabulary difference in the label for the hat (the picture is labeled 'toboggan', but here in Iowa we know it as a 'stocking hat'), but my students never knew since they can't read. We used them while reading the story to identify the clothing Little Critter and his sister were putting on to go play outside:
Additional sequencing activities include Building a Snowman and Making Hot Chocolate:
we also used these during story reading
I love barrier games, and this one has amazingly fun pictures to go with it!
For my articulation students we used the Snowy Speech sheets after reading and identified words from the story with target phonemes:
The packet also includes awesome story maps, vocabulary sheets, and writing prompts! Since my caseload is of the preschool variety, I used the writing prompts as conversation starters, then wrote their answers for them, then had them draw pictures of what their answers would be. It was fun!
Additional activities include winter coloring pages, a snowball fight board game, compare/contrast pages, and What's Different cards:
I chose not to print these differences cards out, and instead we used these pages on the iPad. I am going to attach the snowball fight board game to the back of the clothing sort file folder to keep everything in one spot.
Overall, I highly recommend this book companion! It has adorable graphics, a wide variety of activities, and it's very detailed and well made. Get your own copy here. Let's Talk has a ton of other great book packets to check out. She's super thorough with her activities, and creates them specifically to coordinate with Story Grammar Marker. Be sure to browse through all her activities on Teachers Pay Teachers.
You can also find and follow Let's Talk around the web:
a preview of Bugs and Kisses preschool articulation packet
Hellloooooo February!! Is it just me, or was January a reallllly long month?? A few too many "polar vortexes" (vortices?) for one month. I mean, it was so cold one morning, the banana I was eating in the car steamed when I peeled it. I am not joking.
Now that February is here, we have a lot to look forward to: the Super Bowl, all things love, the end of winter in sight, Spring Break! Let's get the party started with some new speech materials!
My newest labor of love is a preschool articulation activity packet! This baby has a sweet Love Bug theme and targets the following phonemes: P, B, T, D, K, G, F, M, N, and it includes bonus practice pages for S. Here's a sample of what's inside:
1) CVC Words in Increasingly Complex Contexts: These cards help students move towards using their phonemes in more complex contexts. They can practice their target phonemes in single words, then phrases, then short sentences. Pictures are included to help our non-readers with the words. (4 cards per phoneme, 40 cards total)
2) Final Consonant Deletion Cards: A lot of my preschoolers are working on eliminating final consonant deletion. These broken hearts will help highlight the final consonant in their target words. Help your students say the first part of the word, then point out the final consonant on the other half of the broken heart. Pictures are included to help our non-readers with the words. (6 cards per phoneme, 60 cards total)
3) Roll, Say, and Cover Games: I love these roll and cover games. This one is meant to be a head-to-head competition! Each player recieves a different color marker or bingo chip. Roll a letter die and a number die (use the Make Dice app if you don't have access to a letter die!), then find the word coordinating with that dice combo. Students practice that word before covering it with their marker. The student with the most words covered in the end is the winner. Two pages are included for each phoneme - one with the phoneme in the initial position of words, and one in the final position of words.
4) 'SWEET' Token Boards: This is a reinforcement game to reward students as they complete their therapy practice. Collect your designated Love Bug and all the letters to spell 'SWEET' before anyone else and you will be the winner! Mats are included as visual aids to help students collect their cards.
5) Color by Number Pages: Roll the dice, practice a word paired with that number, then color the space according to the color by number key. This activity practices target phonemes in the initial position of words.
6) Love Bug Cootie Catcher: This is an open-ended fortune teller hand game which can be used to target any phoneme! Folding and Playing instructions are included.
7) Love Bug Dot Reinforcement: Another open-ended page with the cutest little love bug! He can be used to target any speech goal and is great to send home for home practice.
Bugs and Kisses is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and will be 50% off for the next 24 hours (until 9:30 am central time 02/02/14). I'm also going to give away a copy to a lucky reader! Enter the rafflecopter below for your chance to win :)
The snowman with the green background is "on a football field" :)
