End Of The Week SLP Blues-Articulation and Phonology Edition

I could spend days finding fun activities to use with kids working on articulation and phonological processes.  Here are some that I'm loving right now.

How easy would it be to make this for your articulation students?! Ya I'm loving this idea!

I really like the idea of talking about letters and what sound they make and using that as a theme for the week.  Here are a couple cute ideas on how to theme it after a letter.

Cute sorting activity for digraphs. 

Match the sound with the letter activity.  I'm a sucker for anything ice cream, so this was an obvious activity for me!

Adventures in Speech Language Pathology has these awesome artic board games!

Speech Room News has Artic Jack in the Box

Grab some cups and play Artic Tower over at Sublime Speech.

What are some of your favorite games and activities to play with your students working on articulation?

Moving on...

It's a pretty bittersweet day. 

I am packed up and ready to move, ready to leave the place I've called home for the past 2 years. 

I moved to Austin on a whim.  I thought it sounded cool and I had nothing holding me back.  There have been some major ups and some major downs these past 2 years, but I have to say I don't regret the decision at all.  It was something I needed to do before I made a permanent home somewhere.  I've moved to 2 cities where I didn't initially have my family or a host of friends, and it's an experience.  That experience is one that I think everyone should have at some point in their life.  I'm glad I got mine out of my system early and now I'm ready to hole up in a city with family and friends and never look back. 

This move is making me reminisce about my first 2 years on the job.  Wow! is all I have to say.  Grad school prepares you, but doesn't at all.  On the job training is crucial and I had some pretty amazing teachers during my time in Austin.  If you know me, then you know I'm pretty emotional and sentimental.  Saying goodbye to my students has proven to be more difficult then I thought.  It's amazing when I think about the student's I got last year and the cluelessness I faced as I worked with them on their goals.  Then I look at them today and think "holy cow"!  Students that you couldn't understand a word out of their mouth or were completely non-verbal, now are working on /r/ and have to be told repeatedly to be quiet because they are talking too much. Working in the schools is such a great thing because even after you dismiss a student you get to see them in the halls and see all the hardwork in motion.  It has also provided me with the creativity required to work with 60 kids on a caseload with varying speech and language goals.  That need for creativity led me to this blog. 

This blog has truly become such a wonderful outlet for me.  I selfishly started it to keep track of my ideas and it's turned into this thing that I can't even wrap my head around.  I mean my name was in the ASHA Leader (sorry 'humble brag' right there).  It has been so cool to connect with all of you through email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and I just really love this little community we have.  Everyone is so supporative and understanding.  I have a bad day with naughty students and I guarantee someone has had a worse day and we can complain together (so much more fun to complain with someone than at someone). 

I hope this isn't a TMI post, but I feel like all of you that read my blog and send me wonderful, encouraging emails have become like an Internet family to me.  My real family has to deal with my emotional state so why shouldn't all of you?!?

These next several weeks I plan on driving 1,200 miles in a U-Haul truck with my lovely brother, spending hours upon hours of playing and snuggling with my niece, going on a family vacation and getting my brain power back to start a new job and navigate my way through an unfamiliar city.  So basically what I'm trying to say is, I will try to continue posting as much as I can, but please understand if I slack off just a little.  You all understand, right?

Thanks for letting me get all cheesy with you. J

Appy Hour

Bluster!-Free
In the app Bluster you can pick what grade level and then you decide whether you want to work on rhyming words, prefixes, synonyms, homophones, word roots etc.  I used this app to practice synonyms.  They give you quite the list of words and you have to find the 3 words that all mean the same thing.  It's a kind of difficult game, so I used it with some of my upper elementary kids, but it definitely had them talking and working as a group to come up with the 3 synonyms. 

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Feel Electric!-Free
The first thing as you're introduced to the app is to decide how you feel.  The app gives you a bunch of words and you decide how you're feeling.  If the child doesn't know what the word means, you just tap it and it gives you a definition.

There are several different features to this app. 

Mood Tales-
Mood Tales has you pick words and then it incorporates the word into the story.  This is great for talking about vocabulary.  Keep track of all the words you choose and then have the group try to come up with a silly story (kind of like mad libs).  Then see what kind of story the app came up with.  This was really fun and great for working on intonation and using and understanding different voices when you are happy/angry/excited etc. 

Mood Dude-
Mood Dude talks about how you can look at someone's face and all the little things tell you how they are feeling.  You can make the Mood Dude's eyes go down, change his eyebrows, mouth and arms. 

Moodosphere-
Moodosphere keeps track of your feelings and you can see how your mood has changed over the week. 

There are games that you can play also. One of them is where a picture of a person goes across the screen and you have to pick the emotion that they are feeling. 

All in all I was very impressed with this app.  Especially because it's FREE!

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Speech With Milo Therapy Ideas-Free

This is kind of like a Twitter account.  They post "#milotips" for you to use in therapy.  They also give you links to other blogs that have fun activities.  Great if you can't wait for my "End of the Week SLP Blues" and you need an idea ASAP.  I've seen some really cute and easy ideas posted on this feed. 

Happy "Appy Hour"!