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.

Friday Funny

This gif is from an amazingly entertaining tumblr called "What Should We Call SLP". If you haven't seen it before, I highly suggest you do. You can check out the original post here.

When you cue a child with a frontal lisp to "hide your tongue".

"S...Peachy" Feedback {linky party}

rewarding people for leaving great feedback on Teachers Pay Teachers

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Someone is going to get LUCKY today if they left great feedback in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop! This feedback linky party is hosted by Nicole at Allison's Speech Peeps. Click on over her way to see who else is giving away freebies.

I really enjoy reading each and every bit of feedback that is left on product pages. Truly great feedback helps me learn what my buyers like, which activities are useful, and even ideas to help me improve the activities I make. So make sure you leave detailed feedback, even on free items.

This month, I'm thanking two people for their kind feedback: one on a paid product, and one on a free product.

#1: Story Grammar Prompts - I'm so grateful for all the kind words Speech Universe had to say about the usefulness of my Story Grammar Prompts.

 

#2: Progress Report Templates - I'm so thrilled Vickye L. is getting great use from my Progress Report Templates for Speech Therapy.

Speech Universe and Vickye L, thank you so much for your wonderful feedback! Please email me at schoolhousetalkslp@gmail.com with your choice of a product from my Teachers Pay Teachers shop. Congratulations!

If you didn't win here, you may be the lucky one at a different blog. But you HAVE TO leave helpful feedback on TpT to be considered. Now enjoy your St. Patrick's Day!

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Abby is feeling lucky to be on Spring Break today!

Friday Funny

Praying for warm weather while I'm busy doing nothing!

(source)

Leprechaun Mask Adapted Craftivity

 instructions for creating and adapting Leprechaun masks in the speech room

Last week it was Cat in the Hat Masks, and this week we've moved on to Leprechaun Masks! We've had a blast with these :) Read on to learn how to make your own in six easy steps.

You will need:

*paper plates (precut the centers out of your plates)

*yellow construction paper (precut into 2" x 2" squares)

*black construction paper (precut into 1 1/2" x 9" strips)

*orange markers, crayons, or paint

*green construction paper (9" x 12")

*glue stick

*scissors

*tape

Step 1: Have your students color the entire plate ring orange. I had them color on the back of the plate.

Step 2: Fold your green construction paper in half. Cut the paper into an L shape over the fold. Note: it's very important to pay attention to how you are cutting your L. Make sure you're cutting off the edges, NOT the fold (see below)!

Step 3: Glue the black strip onto the hat. Instead of cutting the black strip to fit each hat, I just had my students fold over the extra and glue it down onto the back.


Step 4: Cut out the middle of the gold square. An easy way to do this is to fold the paper into fourths, then cut out the corner halfway down each folded side:

Then glue the buckle over the black strip:

Step 5: Attach the hat to the paper plate beard. I think the easiest way to do this was with good ol' scotch tape.

Step 6: Cut strips every half inch or so along the edge of the paper plate to make it look like a beard. Voila! You are finished!

I made some visuals to go along with this craftivity. Some of my students benefit from using picture symbols to make requests and expand their utterance length. This download has picture symbols, sentence strip, and sequencing activities. You can download it for free here.

This was a great activity for all my students. My little ones worked on increasing their length of utterance by making requests and adding in descriptive words (colors). Others were perfecting sequencing and following direction skills. My articulation students wrote words with their target sounds on the hats. I just adore how they turned out!

Don't forget to download your visuals for these marvelous masks here. Please leave a comment or follow my Teachers Pay Teachers store if you download the freebie. Thanks! May the luck o' the Irish be with you!

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Abby would pay off all her student loans if she found the leprechaun's pot o' gold.

Friday Funny

(source)

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(Right now, my absolute fave is Instagram! I post frequently, including special treats just for Instagram followers, so be sure to follow me @schoolhousetalk!) 

DIY Token Reinforcement Towers

instructions to create your own token tower reinforcement system

 

Token Towers reinforcement system from Super Duper, Inc has been on my wish list since I was in grad school. It is really motivating for students to try to fill up the whole tower! However, I just couldn't bring myself to pay the $30 price tag. So I set out to make my own version, DIY style. Here's what I came up with!

The tube is a PVC plastic I got from Craft's Direct. I like it because it is a strong plastic so the tube won't cave in or dent easily. Plus, it has a cover to easily contain and store the tokens. You could also use leftover tubes from ornaments or might be able to find something at the hardware store. (Normally $1.99, I got mine on sale 2/$1)

I had a heck of a time finding tokens that where thick, filled the tube without using a million tokens, and slid easily in and out of the tube. I ended up using these chocolate candy coins from Party City. The wrappers are difficult to get off, so I should be able to use them for a while before needing to replace any. I needed 45 coins to fill my tube. (15 coins for $1)

Then I cut a piece of contact paper to fit the tube and made marks with a permanent marker for every 5 tokens.

Total price: about $4.00! I can make a whole bunch of these for the price of the commercial set :)

I started wrapping a hair band around the tube to mark where my students need to reach. A rubber band would also work. Enjoy! If you create your own, let me know in the comments below, or tag @schoolhousetalk on Instagram!

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Abby is giving up candy and is struggling not to eat her token tower.

Cat in the Hat Mask Craftivity

a fun craftivity to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday

Today we did another activity to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday: Cat in the Hat Masks! These are so fun to make and turn out really well. Read on to make your own.

You will need red and white construction paper, white paper plates, scissors, glue, and a stapler. First, cut the center out of your paper plate. Then, cut the red and white construction paper into 1 1/2" strips. For each hat you will need one 1 1/2" x 9" strip of red construction paper, and two each of 1 1/2" x 4 1/2" strips of red and white paper. I had all these prepped ahead of time for my students. Oh, one other thing: a piece of red cardstock (I just cut a regular letter-size piece of cardstock into 4 quarters).

First, line up your smaller red and white strips, then glue the large red square over the strips. This helps them stand upright on the mask.

Next, glue the large red strip to the bottom of the hat.

Staple the finished hat onto the paper plate. I also had red bows precut for my students (or cut them as they were assembling the hat). We used a marker to draw on whiskers, glued on the bowtie, and we were done!

This was a great activity for following directions, patterning, making requests, using describing words, and we even wrote target speech words on the stripes of some of our hats! Have fun with these!

In case you missed it: check out yesterday's roundup of Dr. Seuss activities here.

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Abby thinks all cats should wear hats.

Dr. Seuss Activity Roundup

ideas for celebrating Dr. Seuss in your speech room

March 2nd was Dr. Seuss' birthday, and schools all around are celebrating! Here's a quick round-up of activity ideas you can implement in your speech room as you celebrate the literary genius of Dr. Seuss. Thanks to all of these generous bloggers for sharing their ideas.

First up, from yours truly, the activities we did last year:

We had fun tossing our artic cards into the Cat's hat. Click here to read how I made this.

After reading There's a Wocket in My Pocket, we created our own speech pockets to store practice words in. You can read more here.

You can't celebrate Dr. Seuss without talking about green eggs! This is a synonyms/antonyms matching activity which is available here.

This was my favorite activity last year! Those little preschool hands are so adorable, and their creativity blew me away! We wrote our target speech words on the 'fins'. Read more here.

I cannot take credit for this idea, but a teacher I worked with last year made these truffula tree pencils for her students! Find out more here.

Now for some fabulous ideas that others shared!

The fantastic Jenn from Crazy Speech World has shared wonderful ideas in the past, including a list of words from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish sorted by speech phonemes, striped hat articulation words, and felt board pieces. Click here to read more about these ideas from Crazy Speech World.

You will also not want to miss this adorable Thing 1 and Thing 2 craftivity from Crazy Speech World. Too cute!

Super Power Speech created a couple AMAZING poems to help celebrate Dr. Seuss. You better click over and read both of them!

How about some healthy treats? Check out these edible Cat in the Hat snacks shared from Speech Language Pirates (scroll to bottom of post) (via Cooking Up Good Speech).

Check out this cute Cat in the Hat craft shared by Speech Language Pirates (scroll down to bottom of post). This activity would be great for following directions, describing words, requesting, and writing speech targets on the stripes. #mustdo

Busy Bee Speech wrote about the fun activities she did in her speech room last year. I am in love with her "Cat who eats everything" and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish fishbowl craft! Click here to read more about how she made them.

After completing all these fun activities, you're going to want a snack. How about making Truffula Trees?! Cooking Up Good Speech shared this fun and tasty activity on her blog. Eeek, they look so awesome!

If you follow PediaStaff on Instagram (you really should - tons of great posts!), you know they have been posting a lot of wonderful Dr. Seuss themed activities lately. Be sure to check them out on Instagram and Pinterest!

Finally, I leave you with a little humor. I cannot take credit for this wonderful poem, but I love it!

IEPs (in the style of Dr. Seuss)

Do you like these IEPs?

I do not like these IEPs
I do not like them, Jeeze Louise
We test, we check
We plan, we meet
But nothing ever seems complete.

Would you, could you
Like the form?

I do not like the form I see
Not page 1, not 2, or 3
Another change
A brand new box
I think we all
Have lost our rocks.

Could you all meet here or there?

We could not all meet here or there.
We cannot all fit anywhere.
Not in a room
Not in the hall
There seems to be no space at all.

Would you, could you meet again?

I cannot meet again next week
No lunch, no prep
Please hear me speak.
No, not at dusk. No, not at dawn
at 5 pm I should be gone.

Could you hear while all speak out?
Would you write the words they spout?

I could not hear, I would not write
This does not need to be a fight.
Sign here, date there,
Mark this, check that
Beware the students ad-vo-cat(e).

You do not like them
So you say
Try again! Try again!
And you may.

If you will let me be,
I will try again
You will see.

Say!

I almost like these IEPs
I think I'll write 6003.
And I will practice day and night
Until they say
"You've got it right!"

- author unknown

If you have more Seuss-tastic activity ideas, please share them in the comments and I'll make sure to add them to the post.

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Abby learned to read with Dr. Seuss' ABCs.