Bubble Categories

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Hey Everyone!

Time for my monthly (or so) check-in. ;)  Boy have I been busy with Jamberry work and end of the school year goings-on, but I wanted to share some fun books and another activity for those of you who are still in school or working summer school!

Summer is a great time to play with Bubbles!  I found these adorable books on Amazon and I've been using them in some of my sessions:

I've noticed that my students this year have really struggled with categories - especially naming a category when given members of the category. So, I developed this activity.

There are bubble wand cards that each have 3 category members each:

Then there are bubble container cards with a category name:

There are a few different ways you can use this activity.

1. First, you can use the bubble wand cards separately. Shuffle and have students draw a card. They can read the three members and try to come up with the category.
2. You could also use the bubble container cards separately. Shuffle and have students draw a card. They can read the category name and try to name a specified number of members.
3. Another way to use the bubble container cards would be to divide students into teams.  One card is drawn and teams take turns naming a member of the category until one team can no longer think of a member. Once that happens, the other team gets the point.
4. Use both sets of cards together, mix them up and play a Memory Game.

There is also a game board to increase motivation during your sessions:

My kids love bubbles and I've been using actual bubbles as a reinforcement for this activity.  You can download for FREE in my TPT store! As always, please leave feedback if you download! :)

Book of the Week: Sneezy the Snowman

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It feels like FOREVER since I've actually had the chance to sit down and share with you what I've been doing in my speech room!  Before Christmas, my son came home telling me about a book that his preschool teacher read to him.  It sounded fun!  The next week, a co-worker had it out in her pile of snow themed books and I had to check it out.  Sneezy the Snowman is now one of my all-time favorite snowman books!

I encourage you to head over to Amazon and use the "look inside" feature. You won't be disappointed!  In the story, Sneezy keeps looking for things to make him less cold.  The first thing he does is drink hot cocoa. Many of my students can relate this...it is a fairly common activity post-snow play!  If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that we used Hot Cocoa Speech (a very fun freebie) by Lauren over at Busy Bee Speech:

I used cotton balls because we're not supposed to give food to students...well, technically there is a loophole. A permission slip must be signed by the parent of EVERY student in the group.  It just so happens that one of the teachers with whom I work had already sent home a permission slip for marshmallows!  So, after reading the story to that class, we discussed ways to warm up and what we like to eat with our hot cocoa.  The kids made this craft (the pattern is from Mailbox Magazine) to bring home:

Every January, I target /s/ blends with my articulation students.  Why January? Well, it's the perfect opportunity to target the sound in a naturalistic way!  There are just about 100 ready-to-go target words!  Here are just a few:  snow, snowman, snowball, skate, scarf, sled, slide, slip, slippery, skid...You get the idea!  So, with my articulation groups, we made this snowman craftivity:

For the snowman, I used a printable page from Tales of a First Grade Teacher.  I got the photos from Phonology Roundup by Super Duper (I got the book that comes with a CD ROM). I printed 2 pages per sheet of paper so the pictures would be smaller.  We glued the target words on and, in some cases, added some bonus words (sticks, snowflakes, scarf)!

And that pretty much sums up my week last week!  I'd love to hear from you.  Have you read "Sneezy the Snowman"? If so, what do you think of it?

Mitten Mania!

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BRRR!  It's been so cold all over the country this week that I bet even in the south kids are wearing winter clothing they've never seen before!  This week in my speech room, we've been doing activities related to MITTENS!  Here's the run-down:

The Mitten:

In many of my groups, we read "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. Who doesn't love this book?!? Believe it or not, I drew the animals from the story when I was in college (in the mid to late 90's) and they are STILL hanging in there!  This still shocks me because I didn't even think of laminating them at the time!  

Here's a closer look:

We worked on sequencing the order in which the animals went into the mitten and I found this printable emergent reader take-home book from Jamie Mayas on Teacher's Pay Teachers. What a great way for my preschoolers to practice the vocabulary from the book!

Noisy Story:
In some other groups, we read the Noisy Story "The Mitten." (Click HERE to see more information on the Noisy Stories program).  This story is about a lost mitten.  I begin the story by wearing one mitten and telling the kids that I'm going to tell them a story about something you can wear in the winter.  Believe it or not, they don't ALL clue in that the story will be about a mitten! Once they do figure it out, I tell them that there is a BIG problem in the story (mind you, I'm still wearing ONE mitten).  Eventually someone infers that there is a missing or lost mitten in the story...

At the end, the mitten is found on a snowman! My preschoolers love when I pull out my snowman (above) with the mitten stuck to his belly.  (Sometimes they make me feel like a magician!)  The younger kids worked on same/different using real mittens (see photo below) as well.

PS, If you want a similar type story for older kids, check out "The Missing Mitten Mystery" by Steven Kellogg.

EET: Mitten style!

I have rounded up a ton of mittens over the years.  I usually pick them up at the end of the winter in a clearance bin. We focused on the "eye" bead of the EET strand and described what the mittens look like.

I don't know if I mentioned this before or not, but I'm doing my Student Learning Goal for my Educator Evaluation on the EET.  Based on my mid-year data, my kids are just NOT getting the eye bead!  Here's an example of a very typical response from my kiddos during mid-year data collection:

Me:  What's this?
Student: A carrot.
Me:  Right! {shows green bead}Green-group. What group does a carrot belong in?
Student: Food group.
Me: Nice! {shows blue bead}Blue-do. What do you do with a carrot?
Student: You eat it!
Me:  You're doing great! {shows eye bead} Eye ball!  What does a carrot look like?
Student:  It looks like a carrot!
Me: {face-palm!}

We spent about 2 weeks on describing appearance, but I guess we need some more time with that!  So, we grabbed the EET strand and worked on describing the appearance of the mittens.  If you don't have a ton of mittens like I do, you can always make them out of paper.  

I used a pattern similar to the one below and printed them on letter size scrapbook paper, then cut them out.

Want a copy of the mitten patterns? Click HERE.

And there you have my week of Mitten Mania!  What are your favorite Mitten activities?

Book of the Week: Acorns Everywhere!

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One of the books I'm using this week is "Acorns Everywhere!" by Kevin Sherry.  This is a VERY simple book that I picked up from one of the Scholastic flyers for $1.00 last year. There really aren't a lot of words, so this is a great book for having students "read" the pictures!

We discussed why the squirrel is burying acorns, whether or not students have seen squirrels gathering food in their yards, as well as the emotions of the different animals we see on the pages.  After we were finished, we worked on following directions using acorns (put them in the the cup, give three acorns to Mrs. Smith, put one one your toes, etc.).

In my next sessions with the kids, we used this Roll & Cover Game to target their individual language and articulation goals:

If you'd like a copy of this game, you can download it HERE.

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Round Up!

I can't believe Thanksgiving is only three weeks away!  I had every intention to finish all of my Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving this year, but I'm not sure that's going to happen!  I digress...I know many of  you may be prepping for your therapy sessions and want to include some fun Thanksgiving themed items, so I figured I'd share a round-up of my Thanksgiving posts from last year:

• I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie:  This is one of my favorite books for Thanksgiving! This post has links to some fun free activities from other blogs that you can use to accompany the book.

• Articulation Turkeys:  This is a FREE printable to target single word articulation skills. I included blank pages as well so that you can use the turkeys to address other sounds as well as language targets.

• Thanksgiving Bingo:  This is another FREEBIE designed to target Thanksgiving vocabulary in a fun way!

I will be adding some new posts about Thanksgiving this year, but I wanted to make sure you didn't miss the old ones!

Happy November!

Book of the Week: Skeleton Meets the Mummy

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I think this book is becoming one of my Halloween Favorites! Skeleton Meets the Mummy is the story of Sammy the Skeleton.  His mother asks him to bring a thermos of soup to his grandmother since it's chilly.  Sammy tries to hurry because he's meeting his friend Derek to go Trick-or-Treating, but he is being followed through the woods by a mummy!  This book is not too scary for the little ones and is great for having kids make predictions (Did you predict how the book will end???).

After reading the story, answering wh- questions, and making predictions, we made mummies:

We used a gingerbread template to make the bodies and added strips of masking tape and googly eyes.  For this particular group, we worked on following directions and body parts. But you can adapt this craft to any speech target...Kids can earn strips by answering questions, by saying an articulation word, by using a target word in a sentence, etc.  You can even write articulation words on the tape strips and have students bring home for carry-over practice!

I did try to create a mummy using the paper doll pattern done on my Cricut (I used the Paper Doll Dress Up Cartridge), but it really wasn't sturdy enough for the younger kids to use without ripping. The tape tends to stick to the table when you do this craft.  When the kids tried to lift it, the pattern ripped.  Fortunately, it could be fixed with more tape!

I would definitely recommend using the gingerbread shape for younger kids though.

What do you think? Would you use this book and/or activity in your speech room?

Book of the Week: We're Going on a Ghost Hunt

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Have I mentioned that I love Halloween?  There are just so many fun things you can do with this theme!  This week, we used the book We're Going on a Ghost Hunt by Kris Hirschmann.

As you may have guessed, this book is similar to We're Going on a Bear Hunt.  However, this story lands you in a haunted house surrounded by ghosts! (But it's not too scary for the little ones).

While reading the story, I focused on the prepositions (over, under, through, etc.) and had the students illustrate using their hands.  After we finished the story, we grabbed my little ghost stuffy and took turns following directions and/or using prepositions:

After the story was OT time!  Our occupational therapist had kids make these chalk rubbing ghosts.  Didn't they come out cute?  As a bonus, we got to work on the preposition "around" while making these!

If you want directions for making the chalk rubbings, let me know!  What's your favorite Halloween or ghost-themed book?

On Amazon:

Book of the Week: Bats

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This week's book of the week is a fun not-quite-Halloween non-fiction book...National Geographic Kids: Bats.

This is a great book to use during the month of October (or anytime really) with older students.  You know, the kids who are "too cool" for some of our fun Halloween stories.

Here's what I like about it...It's loaded with tons of facts and information about bats and real photographs:

You can use pretty much any page in the book for working on WH- questions, summarizing, sentence formulation, etc.

There's a page about Bat Myths and truths:

This past year I was asked to administer state testing for the first time.  I noticed that some of our speech kids have difficulty with True/False questions.  This page would be a great way to practice that skill!

There are fact cards that summarize key vocabulary (Tier 2 and 3 words) from the story.  You can cut these out, but I would recommend making a color copy as there is a page on the other side.

I love the National Geographic Kids series and often find these books in the Scholastic Readers and book fairs.

Here are some of the activities I'm using to accompany this book:

First, we're using this organizer (Bats are...can...have) to summarize the information from the story.  And here's a fun paper bag bat craftivity that can be used for following directions.  You can also cut a mouth and have students feed their articulation words to the bat.  And here's another bat craft that can be adapted...add vocabulary or articulation words (pictures or written words) to the streamers and you have a take-home project that can be used for carryover!

I wanted a faster paced game to get more trials in some of my sessions, so I created this bat themed activity:

Essentially, you place all the cards face down on the table. The child takes a turn completing a task, then draws a card.  If they get a bat, they keep it.  If they get a ghost, they return ALL their cards to the center of the table.  The player with the most points (or bats) at the end of the game is the winner!

You can find this activity in my TPT store.

What are your favorite bat-themed activities?

Book of the Week: Leaf Man

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This week's book of the week is one of my fall favorites, "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert.

As you can see from the cover image, the author arranged leaves so that they look like a person.  Throughout the story, the leaves change into different shapes (turtles, chickens, a cow, etc.).  The illustrations really help you see which children have difficulty seeing the "whole" versus the individual "parts."

This year, I'm running a group with our fabulous occupational therapist.  We worked on naming the pictures created by the leaves and imitating the repeated phrase while reading the story.  Then we went outside on a nature walk to find leaves, acorns, and pinecones.  We headed back inside and used the materials we collected to make Leaf Man collages.  Here are a few examples:

There are a TON of language opportunities with this activity and you can adapt it to meet the needs of just about any language group!

What would you use this activity to target?

Book of the Week: A repeat edition!

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Last year I shared one of my all time favorite stories with you... "Apple Trouble" by Ragnhild Scamell and Michael Terry. (You can view my original blog post on the story HERE.)

This just so happens to be the book I'm using in my therapy sessions this week!  I was thinking of skipping the Book of the Week post this week since I've already shared this fabulous book with you, but I did add a few things this year that you might be interested in.

First, I added a Book Companion for this story to my TPT store, so we've been using portions of that to target negatives, prepositions, and vocabulary:

Next, I adapted this Hedgehog Play Dough activity that I saw on Pediastaff.  We worked on describing parts of an object, following directions, making requests (I gave the students only 1-2 pegs at a time!), and comparisons (between the stuffed animal and play dough).  In some groups we added the nose, ears, arms, legs, eyes, and quills.  Others were happy with just eyes and quills. I'm going to use the same activity in artic groups and give them one peg for every 3 productions of target words.  It was amazing to see how many (and how few) details the students observed.  

I promise that next week's book will be a new one!  Until then, what are your favorite hedgehog games/activities?