The Kissing Hand.

Wow. So, long blog hiatus, eh?

I enjoyed my summer break (hello, Sweden & France and quite a few friends’ weddings!) and then started a new job. Life has been busy! I’m not claiming I’ll blog as regularly as I used to, but wanted to at least share a few things from the units we’ve done so far. Up first: The Kissing Hand.

What a nice story to kick off the year. Quite a few of our students have some difficulty separating from their parents, especially at the beginning of the year, so it’s a good pick. A few ideas:

-For following directions, I made a visual with a photo of a mother raccoon and a baby raccoon. I laminated/velcroed hearts and applied velcro to the raccoons’ hands, heads, tails, etc. The students were asked to give Chester a kiss on his hand, put a kiss on his mom’s tail, etc. They also got to put the hearts wherever they wanted, and tell us what they chose.

–Question of the week: at the end of our unit, I copied three scenes from the story (Mom kissing Chester, Chester kissing Mom, Chester going to school) and—with laminated/magnet photos of each child—had them cast their vote for their favorite scene. Especially with a citizenship unit coming up, we want to get used to voting! Good for introducing concepts like most/least.

–Parent communication: I sent home all the visuals from the story (which we used during quite a few readings of the book to listen/match/label) and visuals for questions the students answered from the story. Boardmakershare has more visuals for questions made by other users.

-iPad: I used “PeekaBoo Forest”, which has a lot of the animals from The Kissing Hand. Good for labeling forest animals and the changing seasons.

Also coming up: a review of Speaking of Apraxia: A Parent’s Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech by Leslie Lindsay. I was thrilled to receive a copy!

I’ve had some requests via email to share some of my Google Docs. I believe all of them are open to anyone who follows a link from here or sees one elsewhere, so this shouldn’t be necessary. Please let me know if you’re having issues accessing anything!

A couple of projects from the arts/crafts center:

Summer Break.

Just wanted to pop in and say “hi”!

I didn’t really plan to take a hiatus this summer, but that’s how it’s worked out! Did summer school this year, but that wrapped up last week and now I’m truly on summer break (off to Europe next week!). I actually just accepted a new job (still in early childhood), so am really excited to start the new school year and I’m sure will have lots to post.

Thought I’d post the books we used for summer school in our speech/OT/social work group to coordinate with our themes (+ a few ideas).

Ocean: The Pout Pout Fish (we followed directions—finding a fish or frog and crawling through a tunnel to hand it off to an adult, labeling it; sang this song (“Let’s Go Swimming”); sorted ocean vs. farm animals with Boardmaker visuals and beanie babies; identified animals with the Peek-a-Boo Ocean app).

Jungle/Bugs: The Very Hungry Caterpillar (sang 5 Green and Speckled Frogs, used a lot of the ideas mentioned in this post).

Zoo: 1,2,3, to the Zoo & Goodnight Gorilla (we matched zoo animal legos, identified plenty of zoo animals on the iPad, made a zoo of our own with beanie babies, made zoo animals with playdoh)

Vacation: Flip Flop (we packed a suitcase to go on vacation with lots of Miss Elena’s clothes, spread out beach towels/pretended to go to the beach, pretended to surf and spot ocean animals while dancing to to “Surfin’ USA”, made sandwiches for a beach picnic with this great kit).

Have a great rest of your summer!

Things That Go.

Working with 3-5-year-olds, vehicles tend to be a big favorite (okay, with the boys). Here are some Thomas the Tank Engine/basic concepts books I posted earlier, and here is a SMARTBoard activity I made to target labeling vehicles/categorizing them into land/sky (I just used it on my laptop). I printed out similar visuals and laminated the board/pieces to velcro onto it. Here’s a sentence strip visual for pairing color + vehicle (used with students requesting different toy vehicles).

Downloads I like from around the web: transportation unit over on Speech Lady Liz, Air vs. Land vehicles (printables), “count the syllables” vehicles (interactive), big vs. little vehicle visuals, sentence strips with vehicle + location. Favorite related iPad app is Peek a Boo Vehicles. There are some nice interactive Thomas puzzles and stories out there on iTunes, too.

Bonus: Summer BINGO boards my co-worker, Jordan, made. Enjoy! (Version 1, 2, 3, 4)

/S/

I’ll get back on a regular posting scheduling at some point, but for now life is busy busy busy. Just popping in to share a few /s/ materials I’ve made over the years. Hope you enjoy! S-blends to follow soon.

/s/ medial words/visual aid

final /s/ (“toss the ____”)

/s/ initial CV, CVC

/s/ powerpoint (all positions)

Dolls & Princesses.

Happy Friday!

Here are a couple of simple SMARTBoard activities. Could be used to target spatial concepts receptively or expressively, following directions, medial or final /s/ at the phrase level (Where’s the dog? In the castle/doll house), labeling furniture or rooms of the house, etc. Enjoy!

Have a wonderful weekend. I know I need to work on 5ish IEPs today, so time to get crackin’! May, you are intense.

Where Is Dora?

After spotting this activity on Speech Language Play, I printed and laminated it. Today I used it with one of my students who is just starting to answer “wh” questions consistently with visuals. I hid each box under a post-it note, so he had the added excitement of uncovering each picture scene. I was inspired to make a few similar boards of my own. You can download ones for Dora, Thomas, and Spiderman below. Head on over to Speech Language Play for a nice printout with preposition symbols.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Day to all the fantastic teachers out there! I know that, as a school SLP, I’ve also felt very spoiled this week and it’s fabulous. 🙂 One of my three-year-old boys came in bearing carnations today. Pretty adorable. Enjoy the treats and appreciation!

Round-Up.

Time to share a few random things I’ve made and loved this week.

Made by me: Garden SMARTBoard activity (made from the visuals I had laminated/velcroed for Muncha Muncha Muncha. Can use for labeling veggies, following multi-step directions, spatial concepts, etc) + what I sent home to parents, in case you’re looking for inspiration. Here’s a powerpoint targeting /v/ in all positions of words (very simple). A visual to help retell We’re Going on a Lion Hunt. Worksheet for medial /t/ and /d/.

Found around the web: Love this 4-step sequencing download over on Boardmaker Share. Slapples to Slapples: an Apples/Apples-ish adjective game (I just downloaded the free preview for now! Loved using it with my 4-6th grade students). And I want to take advantage of these: sequencing cards that go with books (for preK-1st grade).

And an article I loved reading: “7 Things You Don’t Know About a Special Needs Parent“.

Have a great weekend!

A to Z.

Have been trying to come up with new ways to target auditory memory and word retrieval. I would be eager to hear any of your ideas! Some of my student’s inherited goals are maybe not my favorite—targeting how many syllables are in the sentence a student can repeat back to me, for example, doesn’t feel too functional. In any case, “Free Language Stuff” is one source for inspiration on following directions tasks, which I like for having students follow spoken directions of varying complexity. Last week I played the ever-popular old-school car game “I’m going on vacation, and I’m taking apples, bananas…” with one of my students. It wound up being really interesting just to see what strategies he used to recite every item—-checking out the alphabet posted on the wall, tapping out his responses while going down the page, writing down each item, etc—-and what error patterns popped up. If it’s something that might be useful with your students, feel free to download the visual I made below! I’ll admit, I found myself craving some visual cues by the time we got to Z…

Icky Sticky Frog.

 

This week’s book was Icky Sticky Frog. We have enough copies for each student to hold their own (the tongue/fly attachment on the book is quite the hit), which they always like! Gives us a nice chance to review some of our academic vocabulary (cover, title, author, illustrator, back cover, etc). It’s a nice story for sequencing/recalling: what did the frog eat first? Next? After reading the story we got out a bouncy frog and set up bug visuals around it. The students each got to pick a frog bean bag, bounce it, and label/describe the insect to which their frog landed the closest (e.g. caterpillar: long, green, fuzzy, will be a butterfly). Then we split into two fine motor groups—-one went to make caterpillars with paint, another used tongs to go on a “bug hunt” in two “bean boxes”. Students described the bugs they found. Question of the day: If you could be a bug, what bug would you be (answers were actually pretty great, especially from the students who could answer “why”)? Song: 5 Green & Speckled Frogs

Download: Adaptation of the book (sentence strips). Used to answer wh- questions, expand utterances, target speech sounds (medial /k/, st-, fr-, etc).

Muncha Muncha Muncha.

I mentioned that one of my Spring favorites is Muncha Muncha Muncha by Candace Fleming. I just think it’s fabulous for sequencing, making predictions, identifying emotions, labeling veggies, etc. In the artic arena, this week I’ve made it work for targeting /k/ and /g/ primarily, but of course could use it for /m/, “ch”, whatever you can find in the story to emphasize!

Click on the pictures below for the following downloads.

1) Images from the book for sequencing. Sadly, the copy machine at work scans these in b&w, so I’d certainly recommend just copying your own, but here they are just in case you’re in a pinch! I laminated 6 scenes from the book and have been using them for sequencing tasks.

2) /k/ & /g/. Very simple visual to send home/use during sessions. Carrot & garden are two targets that can be elicited frequently in the story.

3) Retelling the story. Visuals to help students retell the story. Used with students targeting sequencing/expanding utterances and also with some artic students for carryover tasks.

4) Garden visuals. I can’t find mine right now (grr), but previously had printed these and laminated/velcro-ed them to target spatial concepts and following directions. Includes veggies all discussed in the story, a fence, etc. Included different sizes so directions could be made more complex if needed (e.g. Put the smallest bunny next to the big lettuce, etc).

Hope you enjoy! Could pair this story with the bunny books I shared previously or medial “ch” visuals. I also used it with this fruit/veggie SMARTBoard activity with some of my students.