Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Jolly Kwanza too,,,

I was hoping to get this winter themed post up weeks ago.  Alas, this speech lady has been bogged down with evaluations, progress reports, IEP paperwork, Medicaid and all that “fun” stuff that we get paid overtime for (cough, cough not).  Sorry to be a Scrooge, but had to get my “Ba Humbugs” out before I was able to talk about the festive activities that have been going on in speech therapy. 

Christmas

Articulation

"Oh Christmas Tree"

We made Christmas trees out of articulation words that are winter themed.  Colored the pictures green, added a star on top and these labels so parents knew what this activity was all about. 

Ornaments

This activity may look familiar.  I did something similiar in my Halloween post. I used a circle template and then had the kids fold the circles in half. Then, they glued one half of the circle and connected all of them except the last two.  I use four circles for each ornament.  Before you glue the last circles together use string and white glue to create something for the ornament to hang.  Add articulation words to each side of the circle and you've got yourself a speech therapy ornament. 

Language

Hot Chocolate

This was a great activity for beginning sequencers.  They had to sequence how to make hot chocolate. First, I did a demonstration. Then, they completed their sequencing.  After that, they had to follow their own directions to make their hot chocolate.  Thank goodness it got cold in Texas or the hot chocolate wouldn't have been so warm and cozy!

Snowman Activity

This was also an activity from my Halloween post that worked out so well I decided to make it for the next season.  Have the students follow or give the directions to another to make a snowman. Great for working on those quantity, quality and spatial concepts.  Here is the template I used.   

Social Story

Christmas time can be stressful, but it's also a great opportunity to work on those social skills that our kids with Autism need to work on.  I have made a social story about receiving gifts.  There is nothing I dislike more than when a child receives a gift and huffs and puffs because "That's not what I wanted!".  So, to prevent this from happening here are two pages of a social story to read to your kids and send home with parents. 

Social Story Page 1

Social Story Page 2

The Grinch

The Grinch is a great character to talk about expected and unexpected behaviors as well as describing words, antonyms, synonyms etc.  Videos are a great interactive way to work on inferencing as well.  I work closely with a teacher who uses it all the time and it inspired me to do a holiday version. Here and here are two links to Grinch videos. 

Chanukah:

Here is a great post by Jenna Rayburn that has activities for Chanukah.

http://speechroomnews.blogspot.com/2011/11/its-that-time-of-year-hope-youre.html

She also has some great Christmas activities too!

Kwanza:

Heidi Kay over at Pediastaff challenged some bloggers to create therapy activies related to Chanukah and Kwanza.  While the activity I came up with is pretty simple in nature, it was a really great motivator.  These chain links can be used in a couple different ways.   

Articulation:

I introduced Kwanza to the kids first.  I explained what the colors mean and the basic traditions of the holiday. Then, depending on what level they are at, they get to add a link for every sound or sound in a sentence that they produced correctly.  I tried to keep the conversation centered around the holiday.  Whoever has the longest chain at the end of the session gets an extra sticker.

Language:

Because many children at my school do not celebrate Kwanza or Chanukah, they don't know much about the holidays.  I wrote on the white board "Holidays" and the kids had to either tell a personal story (they get a red link), ask a question (they get a green link) or comment on someone else's response (they get a black link).  They want their links to be a mix of colors and not all one color.  Whoever has the longest chain at the end of the session gets an extra sticker.  It was a good way to work on pragmatics and other expressive language goals and get kids to talk about their holiday traditions and ask questions about others.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and enjoys spending quality time with family.  I'm seriously looking forward to it and my goal is to be paperwork free by December 22nd! Happy Holidays!

December Take-Home Program

Articulation:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4

Language:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4

Mama Mia!

So my alarm went off one morning, and I had a sudden “Oh my!” moment.  What was I going to do with my 3 year old group that morning?  We all know 3 year olds must be entertained the entire therapy session or things can get ugly! I don’t know about all of you fellow SLPs, but I find myself thinking of therapy ideas when I’m brushing my teeth, showering, running, sleeping etc.  Well I have to say this spur of the moment activity happened to work out great (we all know sometimes those spur of the moment therapy ideas totally backfire!).  So here it is the pizza articulation game. 

Materials you will need:

-Tan cardstock cut into circles

-Red paper cut into a circle smaller than the tan circle

-One paperclip

-One brad a.k.a paper fastener

-Sharpie to mark the pieces of pizza

-Boardmaker food pictures.

Directions: Glue the red circle onto the tan and then mark lines for your pieces of pizza.  Have the child glue each target word onto each piece of pizza (I pick out the words ahead of time so I know they will get lots of practice with their sound in error).  Then make a hole with your brad, take out the brad and put the sharp side through a paperclip and re-insert it into the pizza.  Voila! you have a homemade articulation game.  The kids just have to flick the paperclip like it’s a spinner and then whatever word it lands on they have to say. 

I include the book Pete’s A Pizza with this therapy lesson.  It’s such a cute book and gets the group in the mood to talk about pizza! Here are sequencing cards to go along with the book here, here and here. 

Bring a doll in and have the children act out Pete’s A Pizza.  Depending on the level of the child you can give them directions of what to do next, or they tell you what part of the story they are acting out. 

If you're not reading Pete's A Pizza and just want to sequence a pizza-making experience here are more sequencing cards here, here and here.

 Pragmatics:

Poppa's Pizza Game

We played this game in social group.  It's great for a te amwork activity, taking turns asking questions ("Can you pass me a pepperoni?").  It's also quite a laugh for the teachers.  My favorite quote of the game happened after the pizza toppled over and all the pieces fell off. 

Student- "Mama Mia!"

(Laughter from other students)

Student-(very excited to get a laugh from friends) "Ya, that means "Oh my! I want pizza!" in Spanish". 

(The kids just didn't understand why the teachers were laughing so hard!)

Enjoy!

Note: To download the files on this post you must have access to Boardmaker.  

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Fall is my favorite time of year.  I love the leaves changing, the cooler weather, sweaters with boots, and pumpkin spice lattes. The list could go on for days.  Anywho, here are some of my favorite activities to do in therapy for Fall and Thanksgiving.

Articulation:

I like to read 10 Fat Turkeys.  In this book the recurring statement is "Gobble, Gobble, Wibble, Wobble." which is just plain fun to say and the kids like to help me read it. 

So after reading this book we of course have to make turkeys! Each feather on the turkey's head has a word related to the fall or Thanksgiving. ( I got reprimanded by a 3 year old for having a yellow beak instead of an orange beak. Whoops!)

Fall Articulation Tree:

I pick out words ahead of time that target the student's articulation goals.  Then they glue the items onto the tree.  As they glue them down they have to tell me the word and then at the end they have to tell me all the weird things on their tree. 

Here are the labels I have the kids put on their page so parents know what it was for.

I would also like to suggest you use the sound pages that are in the bottom right corner of this web page.  There are a multitude of words for all sounds you might need to target. 

Language:

So I don't know about all of you, but I love the There Was An Old Lady books. There are a million and they are really fun.

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves!

I got the template for the old lady from here.  Then found all the items the old lady swallowed and made this sheet in boarmaker. The kids can use this for practicing articulation or can use it for language as a sequencing activity.

I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie:

For this book I made a sequencing activity for how to make a pumpkin pie.  Click here, here and here for the links to this activity. 

Scarecrow Activity:

This is a great activity for expressive and receptive language.  Here are directions you can use to work with an array of students and their auditory comprehension needs. Also, to save all of you lovely readers time and energy I've included the different pieces to the scarecrow here.

To work on expressive language, I made two different scarecrows and laminated them in a manilla folder.  Set them up like work areas and each child has to give a direction to the other child about how to make their scarecrow look like the one on their work folder.  Then at the end each child reveals the scarecrow they've made and see if it matches with the other student's scarecrow laminated into the folder.   

Pragmatics:

For my children who have difficutly with asking questions appropriately I like to have a mock Thanksgiving.  I print off a number of pictures and the kids pick their favorite Thanksgiving foods and have to ask me or a friend to pass them the food.  I always preface it with "Let's pretend we're at Thanksgiving dinner and all the food is at the other end of the table." My hope is that on Thankgiving my kids are able to ask "Can you please pass the turkey?" and everyone says "Oh what nice manners you have!" and the kid says "Yes, I learned this in speech therapy."......a girl can dream, right?

Bulletin Board:

"We're gobbling up speech and language skills!"

I trace the kid's hands and they write words that have to deal with fall or Thanksgiving on each finger.  I like to do this before anything else so that the kids can build up that vocabulary before we move into the rest of the Thanksgiving unit.  The hands are the turkey's feathers. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I am thankful for everyone that visits this blog and supports me in what I love doing.  I couldn't ask for a better career (I mean today I played Mr. Potato Head and spoke in a British accent!)

November Take-Home Program

Here are take-home sheets for the month of November.

Articulation:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

Language:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

Halloween

Halloween is just around the corner.  Here are some ideas of how to incorporate the holiday into your articulation and language therapy. 

Articulation:Use a trick or treating basket and have the kids pull cards that target their speech sounds.

Pumpkin craft
I got the idea and template from this website.  I of course had to tweek it to fit my therapy needs.  The kids glue Halloween words that have their speech sound on each side of the 3-D pumpkin. It was a fun activity that even my 3-year olds could do. 

Ghost scavenger hunt

Tape string around your room (my goal was to make it look like a spider web) and paperclip sound cards on it.  Each child makes a ghost out of a white lunch sack and black crayon.  Then the scavenger hunt begins.  They use their ghost's mouth to grab the cards off of the web and bring it back to the table where they have to tell me what they found. 

(Warning: Making this web is very time consuming.  Might I suggest having your fluency group help you while you chat about life and work on those fluency strategies?!?)

Candy corn sound blending activity:  I found this image through clip art and copy and pasted it into BoardMaker.  I then added letters to each section of the candy corn.  The kids can play around with their sounds at the beginning and ending of words with different vowels in the middle. 

Language:

Sequencing book/social story for trick or treating. 
Page 1 
Page 2 
Page 3
(you must have BoardMaker to download these files)


Sequence how a pumpkin grows. “It’s Pumpkin Time” is a great book for sequencing how a pumpkin grows from a seed to a jack-o-lantern. 

Describe a pumpkin:  I print off a bunch of describing words beforehand and have the kids shout out what words describe a pumpkin. If they have trouble you can let them choose between the pictures. The best way to do this is to actually have a real pumpkin that the kids can touch and see. 

Bulletin Board Ideas:
"Look At What Sounds We're Brewing Up"

Some lovely teaching assistants made all these circles (bubbles) for me. The kids brainstorm words that go along with Halloween.  Then, depending on what level they're at, the child:
A. draws a picture and writes a word that has their speech sound in it.
B. Writes a sentence with one of the words in it.
C. Writes a scary story that they have to read to the group and use their best speech sounds while they read it.   

Can you tell I love Halloween? This nice fall weather is really getting my brain rolling with ideas on how to get outside during speech therapy.  This speech lady is in desperate need of fresh air!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is another favorite among my students and of course I happen to like it too.  Here are some ideas about how to integrate this book into your therapy.

Articulation:

I like to have the kids try and think of all the foods they like to eat.  We try to then find their speech sound(s) in the words.  Another activity that is fun for my younger kids is to create their very own “Hungry Caterpillar”.  Then they tell the group what their hungry caterpillar ate.  I pick the foods to put on their caterpillar so it targets the sound(s) they are working on in speech. 

The label on it says ______(name)'s Very Hungry Caterpillar

Language:

This is a great book for sequencing, talking about plural endings, categorizing etc. 

I made this caterpillar with a plain white paper lunch sack and painted it so the mouth was at the opening.  After we’ve read the book we sequence the foods and the kids get to put the picture of the food in the caterpillar’s mouth. 

This is a good activity if you are working on students being able to put complete sentences together and/or using plurals.  Make cards for Monday-Sunday, numbers 1-5 and a card that says “apple”, “pears”, “plums”, “strawberries” and “oranges”.  Have the kids figure out where each card goes on the sentence line. 

"Monday he ate 1 apple."

"Wednesday he ate 3 plums."

Other ideas:

-Make a t-chart and categorize the good foods in the book from the unhealthy foods. 

-Sequence the life-cycle of a butterfly.  

-Have each student create their very own Very Hungry (insert student's name here) and sequence the foods they had for breakfast, lunch, dinner etc. that week.