Rain, Rain, Go Away!

I love activities that I can use for a large variety of groups.  That's why I was so happy when I found an activity that was similar to the following one on Pinterest and decided to recreate it.

Introducing... Umbrella Color Matching!  I used this activity to target colors, request, syntax, etc with my younger students and it was a fun reinforcement activity with my older students.

Start by making umbrella "tops" and "bottoms" in whichever colors you choose.  Put a small "swatch" of color on the umbrella handle to create the matching part of the game.  Place all of the umbrella parts in a container.  After the child has completed a task related to their goal, they can select a "top" and "bottom" (with their eyes closed, of course) from the container.  If the match is a true match, they get one point.  If not, they hang on to their umbrella parts because they may create a pair with those parts later in the game!

My students LOVE anything that somewhat resembles a game, so they loved this one!  I hope your students do it!

If you're looking for any additional "rainy day" activities, check out my TpT store!  (Or read on!)

I have so many students working on describing with attributes, which was the inspiration for "What's Under My Umbrella: Describing Fun!"  

In this activity, each child receives a cloud with describing raindrops.  

As the umbrella card is read, students put the raindrops under their cloud that match how the item was described.  

You can grab this activity HERE!

Next up is Rain or Shine Functions!

In this activity, students take turns drawing a sun with a function description and matching it with a picture raindrop!

You can grab this activity HERE!

If you have students working on categories, the next activity is for you!  Spring Shower Categories helps students learn how to sort items among twelve different categories!

Students take turns drawing a rain drop and placing it under the correct "category umbrella".

You can grab this activity HERE!

Last up is "Rainy Day Go-Togethers"!  

In this activity, students take turns selecting an umbrella and finding an item that goes with the picture on the umbrella.

You can grab this activity HERE!

Well, that about does it for all of my rainy day activities.  If you'd like to follow me on facebook to stay up to date with freebies and sales, you can do so HERE!  I hope April showers have brought you May flowers!

April Showers Bring May...

FLOWERS!

This blog post is all about fun flower activities that can be used for a variety of goal areas.

This super colorful spring activity is a variation of a Pinterest find.  We used pictures that contained each student's sounds to create a fun artic "craftivity".  (It's also awesome for targeting patterns and colors too!!)

                                                  

I picked up this cute little flower at the dollar store and then put attribute pictures onto the petals of the flowers.  Students selected picture cards of various objects and then took turns spinning the flower.  They would stop the spinning flower with their finger and then use the "petal" to describe their object.

I also have another flower activity available at my TpT store called "Flower Power Listening Comprehension".

This activity includes passages for beginners, 

as well as for students who need a bit more of a challenge.

You can find this activity here!

Speech Language Pirates also has a super cute blog post with even more flower activities, which you can find here.  (I love her flower pots!  They will definitely be making their way into my therapy room next week!)

If you'd like a chance to win a copy of Flower Power Listening Comprehension, comment below with your favorite thing about the spring!  I'll pick a winner tomorrow!

Also, please consider "liking" my facebook page and/or tpt store  to stay up to date on freebies and sales!

Happy spring!

Spring Into Speech Blog Hop

Welcome to the Spring Into Speech Blog Hop! This hop contains both tons of awesome freebies as well as a chance to win great prizes! Thanks for stopping by and enjoy some great hopping!!



Seventeen awesome bloggers are participating in this giveaway!
1. Crazy Speech World
2. Teach Speech 365
3. Allison’s Speech Peeps
4. Speech Ladies
5. Carrie’s Speech Corner
6. Speak Listen Play
7. Let’s Talk Speech Therapy
8. Major Speech Pathology Fun by a Minor Girl
9. WordNerdSpeechTeach
10. Kids Games for Speech Therapy
11. Speech Time Fun
12. Home Sweet Speech Room
13. Speechy Musings
14. Live Love Speech
15. Busy Bee Speech
16. Consonantly Speaking
17. Sublime Speech

In addition to 17 great freebies, make sure to participate in the Rafflecopter giveaway at Sublime Speech because one lucky winner will receive a $50 gift certificate to TpT, another winner will receive a $30 gift certificate, and a final lucky winner will receive a $20 TpT gift certificate!! In order to participate in the giveaway, just collect all of the letters for a "spring-tastic" sentence by moving through each blog that is participating in the hop! Once you have figured out the special phrase, enter it into the Rafflecopter drawing! (The contest will run from April 9th through April 15th.)



I have created "Spring Time Absurdities" for the blog hop. To grab the FREEBIE, click on this link to find it at my TpT store!

Also, to stay up to date with additional freebies as well as new products, please "like" my facebook page! Ready for some more great freebies?! Here they are!


Kids Games for Speech Therapy


Crazy Speech World


Sublime Speech

Happy hopping!

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

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?

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!

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?