Easter Roll & Color

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.com for your convenience.

Hi everyone!

Did you happen to catch the Acorn Roll & Color that I posted in the fall?  Well, one of the teachers in my school loved it so much that she asked me to create an Easter Version!

Here it is:

I'm using this activity along with the book Easter Eggs Everywhere! by Steve Metzger in my language groups. I love that I can use roll and colors to target a variety of objectives!

You can grab a copy of this freebie HERE.  Let me know what you think about Roll and Color worksheets. Would you like to see more?

Product Review: Pirate Talk by Super Duper

Oh that red box! Who doesn't love coming home to find one of these at their door?

When the nice folks at Super Duper contacted me about reviewing one of their products, I was happy to do so!  First, I'd be foolish to say no to an awesome product from Super Duper (yes I knew it would be awesome before even opening the box!). Second, I love getting new materials for my kids.  Third, I know many of you look to bloggers like me to find how what we really think of products and apps!  Here's what was in the box:

The Details:

Pirate Talk: Receptive & Expressive Language Game.
Created by: Sarah Michaels and the Super Duper Staff.
Grade Level: K-5
Description (from Super Duper's website):  Your students are about to embark on a swashbuckling adventure as they sail the high seas with Pirate Talk, the receptive and expressive language skills game! As students respond to each prompt, they move from island to island on the colorful game board and collect gold coins. The prompts reinforce seven essential communication skills:  Sentence Repetition, Answering Questions, Following Directions, Categorizing, Inferencing, Describing, and Social Skills.
Includes:  Game Board, 150 Color-Coded Receptive and Expressive Language Cards(5 subject areas, 30 cards each), Instruction Sheet, 6 Pirate Player Pieces, 100 Gold Coins, and Electronic Spinner (1–3)


A Closer Look:

My son has learned that a box at the door equals something fun.  So when we came home, he begged me to open this one right away!  We opened the box, took out the game board, and checked out the other items:

Notice M's foot anxiously waiting to play!

I skimmed the directions because I prefer games that allow you to fly by the seat of your pants.  I believe that if the directions are too long and complicated, the kids won't want to play the game.  Am I right?  Anywhoo...you can see that the game comes with basic directions and game variations!  This is great for changing things up and using the same materials for multiple sessions, but in new and exciting ways!

After that, I organized the cards.  I think it's a personality requirement for SLPs to love organization and clearly Super Duper is a company of SLPs! The box has a tray that holds your cards and the cards come color coded and with dividers:

The cards have different scenes on the front.  The scenes depict scenarios from 5 different categories:  activities, community, home, school, and people.  Here's a sample card from the "activities" section:

Super Duper really does have great illustrations, don't they?  On the back of each card are the prompts for each target area: Sentence Repetition, Answering Questions, Following Directions, Categorizing, Inferencing, Describing, and Social Skills. I found that we could use the pictures as conversation starters as well.

Notice that some cards allow children to earn "bonus" coins!

Instead of dice, Pirate Talk comes with an electronic game spinner! How cool is this?!? I love that you only have the option of spinning a 1, 2, or 3 and I may just have to use this with other games as well!  The kids loved pushing a button instead of rolling a game die and NOTHING fell on the floor!! :)

What may just be the best part of this game is that it comes with 100 gold coins! I didn't count them, I'm going to take Super Duper's word for it!  Boys and girls were thrilled to play this game and to earn these shiny coins!

Trying it Out:

My son was in love with the game and didn't really want me to bring it to work.  Once he got over that, I brought it to school and tried it out with my kids.  I used it with kids in Preschool and in Second Grade.  We played the traditional version, nothing fancy.  The kids LOVED it! I loved that I could use it in a mixed group and target different objectives with the same cards!  I did find that with larger groups of kids, we weren't able to "finish" the game by returning our pirates back to their home bases, but none of the kids minded. They were happy to count their coins to find the winner.  If you're wondering, 2nd grade loved it as much as the preschoolers.

Bonus Activity:

My super-observant friend Stephanie was quick to make this observation...There are 100 gold coins. New information suggests aiming for 100 articulation trials/session.  See where I'm going with this?  You can use the coins for motivation in an Articulation Challenge!

I made a quick "bank" out of a butter tub, but how much fun would it be to use a treasure chest piggy bank!?!?

The Take-Away:

Pros:

• As a receptive/expressive language game, Pirate Talk has it all.  You can look at a picture scene and ask each type of question, in addition to targeting inferencing and pragmatics.
• Versatility!  The game cards themselves make Pirate Talk versatile, but the adaptability of the game goes beyond that. (See description below)
• Fun! Who doesn't love a pirate theme?!?
• The description on the box says that this game is for Grades K-5, but the box itself says that you can use it with Grades K and up or Ages 4-10.  

Cons:

• I can't think of a single one!

The Bottom Line:
Pirate talk is a fun, engaging addition to your therapy supply closet.  According to the game's description, you can use it to target 7 areas of communication. However, I have found that you can use it for so much more than that!  The game board can be used for an open-ended activity, the spinner can be used to make your game boards (like those from TPT) more fun, and the gold coins can be used to get 100 trials during Articulation Burst therapy!

If you have Pirate Talk, what's your favorite game variation?  If not, what's your favorite product from Super Duper?

Seasonal Open Ended Dot Reinforcers

So many of us plan our therapy sessions around themes and my Seasonal and Thematic Open Ended Game Boards has been a big hit! (Thank you to everyone who has purchased this and/or any item from my store!).  I love being able to stick to themes AND vary targets for my students, so I created some more seasonal/thematic open ended activities...Seasonal and Thematic Dot Reinforcers!


First, there are 20 black and white (read:  NO COLOR INK NEEDED!) pages.  These sheets have 80 circles per page. The circles are filled with seasonal/thematic icons (apples, pumpkins, etc.) and there is one blank sheet as well. These can be filled using crayons, bingo chips, bingo markers, or small stickers.

Apples:

Pirates:

Variations of Use:

1. Students can fill in one dot per articulation production or language target practiced. (These pages have 80 dots/sheet)
2. Students can roll a game die after they perform a specified task and fill in the corresponding number of dots. The first student to fill their page is the winner.
3. Use the blank page. Have students fill with small stickers (the kind used for sticker charts). You can use as a behavior reinforcement as well.

Next, there are 13 Colored Dot Reinforcers. You can print and laminate desired pages and have students fill in the dots using bingo chips or tokens.

Halloween:

Thanksgiving:

Bubbles:

If you're interested, you can access this packet in my TPT store (HERE).

I've also added my two Seasonal and Thematic Open Ended activities into a value priced bundle, which can be found HERE.

Enjoy!

New-ish TPT items

Over the summer, I added two new items to my TPT store, but never blogged about them!  I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but figured I'd share them with you here.

Apple Trouble Book Companion
Last year I wrote a Book of the Week post about "Apple Trouble!" by Ragnhild Scammel (you can read that post HERE).  It's one of my favorite books and I definitely use it every fall.  Since I do use it every year, I decided to create some new activities.  This packet contains story props as well as activities to target prepositions, negatives, vocabulary, and story retelling.  There is an open ended game board as well.

You can find this packet HERE.

20 Seasonal and Thematic Open Ended Game Boards
I love using thematic game boards with my articulation groups and to increase motivation for language tasks as well.  I decided to make game boards for each month of the year and for some of my favorite themes as well.

The seasonal games included are:

August: Back to School
September: Orchard Outing
October: Halloween Candy Hunt
November: Turkey Trot
December: Present Parade
January: Penguin’s Journey
February: Here Comes Spring (Groundhog)
March: Go for the Gold
April: April Showers
May: Buzzing Bumblebee
June: Follow the Fish
July: Fireworks Fun

Additional Themes:

Alphabet Blocks
Carnival Capers
Farm Animal Round-Up
Zoo-bilee
Treasure Hunt
Puppy Paradise
Mice-capades
Start Your Engines

You can find the board game packet HERE.

I hope to get to work on creating some new materials (including freebies) as soon as I start seeing kids!  What kind of materials are you looking for in the future?

Don't Throw it Away! Milk Bottle Caps

I've been saving the caps from my milk bottles for a while because I wanted to make those cute ladybugs that are all over Pinterest.  Well, I tried and had a Pinterest FAIL!  Basically, I tried drawing the dots on with a Sharpie, but the color didn't stick.  So, what to do with a whole bag full of milk bottle caps?

Make a therapy activity!

First, you'll want to wash your milk caps and let them dry.  Gather the amount you want - the number doesn't really matter.  More caps = longer activity, less = shorter activity!  You'll also want some circle stickers.  I used the kind used for labeling prices at yard sales.

I wrote the numbers 1, 2, and 3 on each...

Place one sticker on the underside of each cap and you're ready to play!  You can use this simple game as an open ended reinforcer for just about any target.  Once a student completes targets, they can turn over a cap.  They get the number of points indicated on the sticker.

The student with the most points at the end of the game is the winner!

If your kids aren't fans of "point" activities, there are other variations you could use.  You could hide one "target" (Dora, Spongebob, a star, etc.) and the person who finds the target is the winner.  You could also play similar to "Lids & Lizards" by Super Duper - place stickers under only some of the caps.  The student who found the most stickers at the end of the game is the winner.

There are some other cute ideas for using milk bottle caps on Pinterest.  Here are a few:

1. Alphabet Stamps
2. Hungry Caterpillar Activity
3. Counting Game
4. Magnet Boats
5. Word Families Activity

Do you re-use milk bottle caps?  What are you using them to do?

Open Ended Ice Cream Themed Quick Game

The countdown to summer has begun for many of us.  From the talk on Facebook, there are a lot of you out there who have many less days than I do!  Since I have summer vacation on the brain, I decided to create a summery themed open ended game for you guys.

This Ice Cream themed Open Ended Quick Game is perfect for RTI sessions and/or to add some fun to quick burst articulation therapy.  Simply laminate the pages and cut out the cards.  Have students complete a desired number of language/articulation tasks.  Once they have completed tasks, students draw a card.  Once a student collect cards 1-4 of an ice cream flavor, they win the game!

This is a pretty simple game, but it's great for short sessions, RTI, or for those times when you have a few extra minutes in a session!  You can download this freebie HERE.  Hope you enjoy!

St. Patrick's Day Preschool Language Pack & Giveaway

Hi Everyone!  I'm excited to share my newest TPT product with you all!  It's a "St. Patrick's Day Preschool Language Pack!" Here's what you get:

All the Colors of the Rainbow:

In this activity, you get 36 cards targeting naming items based on given attributes (e.g., "Name something orange that you can eat."):

There are also "Pot of Gold" cards (Take Another Turn) and "Leprechaun" cards (Leprechaun takes your gold...Lose a Turn!).  For your younger kids who may have a hard time coming up with a response without a visual, I have included color mats for 6 different colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.

I wanted to include foils on the individual color cards (e.g., for yellow, there are no questions about sunflowers or stars).  There are two mats with the colors mixed together as well:

This way you can work on receptive identification of colors, etc.  

Leprechaun's Hat Open-Ended Reinforcer:

As students complete tasks, have them use bingo chips, pom-poms, or bingo markers to cover the dots on the hat.

Leprechaun's Race for the Gold!

Use the shamrock cards or a game dice.  When using the cards, the player counts the shamrocks on the card and moves that number of places on the game board.

Leprechaun's Prepositions

See if your students can figure out where the leprechaun is hiding!  This activity targets the following prepositions:  in/out, under/over, on/off, in front/behind, around/through, and beside/between.

You can find this packet in my TPT store HERE.

In celebration of reaching 600 likes on Facebook, I'm going to give away THREE of these packets!  Enter using the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

"Snowy Speech and Language Activities" A Guest Post on Home Sweet Speech Room

Do you all remember the AWESOME New Year's Receptive Language Packet Guest Post from Carissa at Home Sweet Speech Room?  (Thank you so much Carissa!)  I wanted to reciprocate and share one of my newest activities with the readers of Home Sweet Speech Room!  So, I wrote a guest post for her called "Snowy Speech and Language Activities."

This is a 25-page FREE download containing five different activities!  Want to download?  You'll have to head over to Home Sweet Speech Room and read the full post!

Low Cost Therapy Materials: Guest Post from Teach Speech 365

Today we have a guest post from Teach Speech 365.  She's the one we have to thank for the Chain-Letter Link Up idea!  Teach Speech chooses to remain anonymous. She graduated with her masters in 2010 and worked in the public schools for 2 school years prior to switching to a private practice. She has experience working with clients ages 2- 21 and adults. She may return to the schools in the future.  She is ASHA certified and has really loved creating and sharing materials with the blogging world.  Take it away!

I have done several posts featuring activities I've created, so I thought it was time to do a blog post about some of my favorite low cost therapy activities.

Ready?

1. Dollar Store Baseball Bases - I found some plastic foam baseball "bases" (Dollar Tree...I think) that I thought would be good to use somehow in therapy. It came with the pitcher's square, home plate, and 3 bases. When I had a group of boys, I pulled them out and laid them out on the floor. They took turns coming up to "bat" and had to answer a question before running/walking to a base. It was easy to adapt to all of their goals and they had a great time seeing who could get the most "home runs."

2. Popcorn containers and bottle caps - I found 4 plastic popcorn containers at the dollar store. I began saving water bottle caps (green and clear) thinking I could use them somehow. For some reason, putting the four containers on the floor and letting kids toss the caps in seems to be a big hit. They particularly like to race to see who can get one in  a container before the other.

3. Tiles - You can pick up single tiles at any home improvement store for around 10-15 cents each. I usually have kids glue some felt onto the back and then let them paint the front. I've also made some sensory tiles by glueing on beans and cotton balls (you could do sandpaper, etc). The kids really like having something to take home with them!

4. Chocolates - I did an activity involving chocolates around Valentine's Day one year. If you are able to use food in your therapy sessions, this is sure to be a hit. I bought a few of those little boxes of chocolates (Russell Stover, Whitman's) that come with 4 pieces. I put them all on a plate and we discussed what filling we thought was in each one. It was great for prediction, vocabulary, and expressive language skills. We then cut them open to see who was right. I made up low tech communication boards with possible fillings, plus some simple sentence strips and a yes/no board using Custom Boards by Smarty Ears. You can grab a copy HERE! 

What are your favorite low cost therapy activities?

Here are some links to follow Teach Speech 365 on her blog, Facebook page, and TPT store.  Make sure you go "like" and "follow."

PS, Want to know some of my favorite low-cost therapy materials?  Check back next week and I'll share them with you!  Also, if you're interested in writing a guest post, email me at cmanchester57@gmail.com.