Sunday, March 17, 2013

Out of This World Speech Giveaway!!!



Have you heard about the awesome speechie giveaway going on? Teachers Pay Teachers gift certificates and fantastic speech materials - what more could you ask for?! Here are the prizes being offered:

Here are the prizes:

* The 1st Prize Winner will receive a $25 Teachers pay Teacher Gift Certificate plus all of the following Speech Therapy product downloads.

* The 2nd Prize Winner will receive a $10 Teachers pay Teacher Gift Certificate plus 10 downloads.

* The 3rd Prize Winner will receive a $10 Teachers pay Teacher Gift Certificate plus 2 downloads.

Check out Kids Games For Speech Therapy for a complete listing of all of the fabulous products and don't forget to enter this Rafflecopter drawing!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Dollar Store Finds to Jazz Up Therapy Sessions!!

I love the dollar store when it comes to therapy activities. I can't leave the store without some awesome finds to incorporate into therapy sessions. Recently, I stopped at my local dollar store and (surprise, surprise) found some great items to spruce up my therapy sessions!!

Tools of the Trade



I always find myself giving my students "tips" to help them with something that they are working on. Typically, I have post-its attached to their goal page(s) and pull them out when we are working on a specific concept, but these little tools are way more fun! I whipped up a few tool cards for my students working on their /r/ sound and wa-la - easy, simple, and fun way to target their "tips"! "Work on your hammer" just sounds so much more fun than saying "pull your tongue up"!!

Holiday Game Lights



I have a love/hate relationship with flashcards. While on one hand, I find them very useful, I also DESPISE drilling with them. This is an easy way to jazz up boring old flashcard activities! This week is St. Patty's week in my therapy room, so I cut out some shamrocks and taped them to "tap lights". (I don't really know what these lights are really called, so "tap lights" it is!) The first student to turn on their tap light gets to say their word and gets some sort of a reinforcer. This week, it was M&Ms because they are the color of the rainbow!

A Little Bit of Applause, Please?



I am always trying to find new ways for my students to self monitor. I saw this "clapper hand" in the store and knew just what I wanted to do with it. As students are transitioning to sentences/reading/conversation, they get to use the "clapper hand". As they are speaking, if they say a word incorrectly, they shake the hand once and repeat the word correctly. If they say their whole sentence/read a whole paragraph/participate in a conversation correctly, then they shake the hand a few times to give themselves some applause. Hey, who doesn't like to toot their own horn every once in awhile?!

Vocabulary Dice



A while ago, I purchased a material called "Context Clues" by Nicole Allison. You can check out her blog post about this product here. We are using these cards to target context clues, definitions, and are creating our own sentences with the word. Because we review the same vocabulary words often, I wanted to change things up a bit. I wrote the vocabulary words that we are working on onto dice and presto - a great product paired up with an interactive activity! I may even challenge my students to put two words into the same sentence, but we're a ways off from that right now!

I hope that you found these ideas helpful and maybe they have even inspired you to make a dollar store run of your own! As always, please feel free to also 'like' my facebook page for freebies and flash sales! If you are looking for new materials to use in your therapy room (along with a lot of freebies), please check out my TpT store!

What inexpensive ideas have you found to add to your therapy room?

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Happy (Almost) St. Patty's Day!!

Hooray for spring! St. Patrick's Day always seems to signal the start of spring (and nice-ish weather)!! Here are a few activities that we'll be using in speech this week and next to celebrate St. Patrick's Day!

My kids are HIGHLY motivated by food, so I was really excited when I found this fun M&M rainbow activity over at Making Learning Fun! I'm planning to use this with the majority of my artic and grammar students this week to get lots of repetitions out of them!! (It's amazing how focused and "on" they are when there's food, especially chocolate, involved!!) Here's a look at this activity template - so cute!!



Who doesn't love a pot of gold?! Even better, who doesn't love an artic pot of gold?! This one is super easy - a black pot, a few yellow paper coins, some artic pictures and away your students will go!



Last but not least, a FREEBIE! This is an activity that can be used to target requesting, turn taking, receptive and expressive shape and color naming, or it could be used as a general reinforcer!!



As you can see, this activity includes a ton of colors and shapes!



Here's an example of one of the pages.

You can grab this FREE activity here! If you're looking for additional St. Patrick's Day activities, I have a bunch available at my TpT store. Here are just a few:

St. Patrick's Day Expressive Language Pack


St. Patrick's Day Receptive Language Pack


St. Patrick's Monsters Inferencing Pack


St. Patrick's Multiple Meaning Words


I'll give away a copy of St. Patrick's Multiple Meaning Words to one *lucky* reader, so if you'd like a copy, comment below about how you might be able to use one of these activities. :) As always, please feel free to 'like' my facebook page for freebies and flash sales!

Monday, March 4, 2013

Speech Sound Touch Downs (and Other Sports Activities)!!

I am so excited for this week because it's "sports" week in my therapy room! I find that this is a theme that appeals to all of my students, young and old(er)! Check out some of my favorite activities for this week!

Here's an idea for artic and phonology. First, cut out brown footballs, as well as two white strips for each football. My students picked their favorite speech words from flashcards, we wrote them onto the white strips, and wa-la! Instant speech sound football! Here's my "demo" for the kids to see...



Once the footballs were complete, we put them onto the wall - TOUCHDOWN(S)!!



If you're in need of some extra football decorations, here's another idea. We'll be creating basic football flags this week with simple triangles and using them to target antonyms and vocabulary words/definitions. (Green and gold - can you tell I'm a Packer fan?!?!)



As much as I LOVE flashcards, I also find that they become a little boring if I don't spice them up on a regular basis, so here's a fun sport game that you can use with those flashcards. First, create a bunch of sports balls out of regular ol' paper plates.



Next, put little "all star" post-its under a few of the plates and put flashcards under each of them as well.



My students LOVED flipping the plates over and trying to find "all-star post-its" (oh, and using flashcards related to their goals too)! Let's just say there was a lot of squealing in my therapy room today! Who knew paper plates and post-its could be so much fun?!

If you're looking for even more sports themed activities, here are a few links to lots of materials at my TpT store!

Before and After Baseball


Football Functions


Football Grammar! (Is/Are, Was/Were, Has/Have, Does/Do)


Hockey Riddles


As always, please feel free to 'like' my facebook page for freebies and flash sales!

What do you think? Could you incorporate any of these activities into your therapy room?