Bubble Categories

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

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! :)

What I did on my summer vacation

I've officially been back to school for two days!  We've had an orientation session and a professional development session so far.  I'll be off the rest of this week and back to school when the kids return on Tuesday.  You may have noticed I've been a bit absent on the blog lately.  I've really tried to spend some time this summer just "being" in the moment, enjoying my son, and relaxing!  I think we all need time to relax and unwind and many of us (especially those of us who are also mommies) feel that we need to constantly be busy...I know I often feel guilty when I'm not doing something.

As an end-of-summer wrap-up, I figured I'd share some of the fun things we've done...

We went fishing with my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew.  My son LOVED it!

We also got a fire pit for our yard and, if you can believe it, I made S'mores for the first time in my life!

Here are some other highlights:

We spent a LOT of time in my yard.  My in-laws bought my son a gym set for the yard and we have the kiddie pool with a slide.  We went to lots of fairs and festivals, a couple of zoos, the splash pad, and the beach!  My city, New Bedford, MA is known as "The Whaling City."  We ended up at the whaling museum, saw some whale skeletons and replicas of the whale boats.  The museum is in the downtown area of the city, which is paved in cobblestones!

I had many more things on my to-do list that we did not get done, but we did have a lot of fun!  I hope you all enjoyed your summer vacations as well!

Book of the Week: Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark (updated)

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

Right around this time last year, I posted about one of my favorite books to use in speech/language therapy sessions - "The Three Little Fish And The Big Bad Shark" by Ken Geist and Julia Gorton.

If you missed it, I created a quick open ended reinforcement game that can be used with any target...

...Click HERE to be taken to last year's post so you can download this FREE updated activity!

This year in some of my groups, we used the fish from my Feed the Penguin Bilabial Sounds freebie, but this time, we fed the fish to the shark!

Boy was that a hit!  I think the kids liked feeding the shark WAY more than they liked feeding the penguin!  (Watch out for those fingers!!!).  You can find the shark printable at Making Learning Fun.  I printed on gray construction paper, cut out the mouth, and attached to a tissue box.  I also attached a staple to the fish tails so the kids could go fishing for their words.

You can see the staple here...I deleted the original picture :(

This book never gets old for me or my students!  Do you use this book too?  What are your favorite activities to accompany the book?

Speech & Language Summer Homework for Preschoolers

Today is my last day of school!  WAHOOOOOO!!!

For the last few weeks, I've been working hard getting a packet of materials ready to send home to the parents who have asked for summer homework.  I'm guessing this may be a little late to be of use to many of you right now, but there's always next year, right?

Here's what you get...

Receptive Language Activities:

• Vocabulary Comprehension
• “Who” Questions
• “What” Questions
• Following Directions on the Farm
• Zoo Animal Riddles

Expressive Language Activities:

• Expressive Vocabulary
• Expressive Vocabulary – Categories & Associations
• Plurals
• Sentence Form:  Subject +Is +Verb +Ing
• Pronouns His & Her
• Prepositions & “Where” Questions

Whole Language Activities:

• Making Fruit Salad
• Memory Game
• Imagination Chair
• Scavenger Hunt
• Sequencing Activity

Articulation Activities: **

• Games for Sound Practice

**For articulation activities, you will need to include sound specific words from another source (e.g., Webber Jumbo Artic Book or http://www.mommyspeechtherapy.com).  

You can access the packet HERE in my TPT store.

Summer Themed Preschool Language Pack

I've been seeing lots of SLPs across the country posting their countdowns on Facebook.  "___ days left of school!"  My district starts AFTER Labor Day and, instead of one week off in March, we get two weeks off (one in February, one in April).  Add to that the number of days we've had to take (Hurricane Sandy, the Blizzard, etc.) and I will literally be in school until the end of June.  But, like the rest of you, I'm counting down the days until my summer vacation.  So, I was very inspired by some clip art I got from Scrappin' Doodles to create a new packet!

This packet targets the most common speech and language objectives I work on with my preschool-aged students.  Here's what you get:

Subjective Pronouns (6 pages).  Students will describe pictures using the words “he,” “she,” and “they.”

Yes/No Questions (4 pages).  Students will answer yes/no questions about the pictures.

Possessive Pronouns & Is/Are Verbs (2 pages).  Students take turns giving small tiles (20 total) to the boy and girl and completing the sentences (e.g., “The dog is his” or “The glasses are hers.”)

WHO Questions (3 pages).  Students will answer the questions about the children in the pictures.

Describing Action in Pictures (2 pages).  Students will describe the pictures using verb +ing and S-V-O formats.

Plurals (2 pages).  Students will use the correct plural form to describe the pictures.

WHERE Questions / Prepositions (4 pages).  Students will use prepositions to answer WHERE questions.

Game Board (1 page).  You can use the game board on its own or in conjunction with the activities in this packet.

And there you have my "Summer Themed Preschool Language Pack!"  You can access this product in my TPT store HERE.  I'm giving away 3 copies!  You can enter to win using the rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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!

Summer Fun Barrier Game

I follow quite a few speech and language blogs and I love reading about activities/ideas/experiences/struggles/challenges, etc. of other SLPs!  Living in New England, you sort of take it for granted that September = Back to School.  I'm realizing that many of you actually head back to school in August.

Since many of you will be back at school during what is technically the summer, I created a summer-inspired activity!  You can use it as a barrier game (*see below if you're unfamiliar with the concept of barrier games), or as a simple following directions activity ("Put the girl with the purple swimsuit in the pool").  You could also use the pictures as a prompt for a "what I did during my summer vacation" conversation.

Graphics by Scrappin' Doodles

*Barrier Games:
 Barrier games are great for listening comprehension and expressive language.  You can play one on one with one of your students, have 2 students play, or have 2 teams of students play.  For a barrier game, you will want two copies each of the background scene and the game pieces (one for each player/team).  You may want to laminate the background scene and game pieces for durability. Cut out the game pieces.

background scene

game pieces

To play, put a barrier (open file folder, large book, etc.) between the two players/teams.  Have one player/team set up a scene using the game pieces.  Then they describe their scene to the other player/team, who tries to recreate the scene exactly.  The more specific the descriptions, the more accurate the recreation.  Once completed, you can remove the barrier and discuss what is correct or incorrect, discuss where communication breakdowns occurred, and brainstorm what the students could have done to improve the outcome.


Grab a copy of the Summer Fun Barrier Game here.  As always, if you download, please leave a comment to let me know what you think!

Pinterest-ing Summer

I have a cute birthday activity for you, but Google Docs is not letting me upload it.  So, I will post that as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I thought I would give you a little more info on me.  You've probably already figured out that I'm an SLP.  I graduated from Marquette University in 1997 (BS) and Emerson College in 1999 (MS).  I've spent my career in Early Intervention and the Public Schools (primarily Pre-K and K).  I'm actually switching schools this year (within the same district), so that will present interesting challenges for me over the next school year!  I married my husband in 2005 and we had our first son, Matthew, in September of 2009.  Typically, I work in the summer, but haven't worked for the past two summers. 

Making horizontal strokes

I discovered Pinterest around Christmas-time and have been hooked ever since.  Since Matthew and I are home all summer, we've been using Pinterest to find activities to make the summer more interesting.  I thought I might share some of our favorites.





Our first project of the summer was a Squishy Bag we found at Play At Home Mom LLC.  I chose this one because Matthew is quite verbal, but just NOT a fine motor kid!  I figured he'd like using his finger to imitate different strokes.  He loved making the bag, but that was about it...

Colors game mat

Next we found this cool Parking Lot Game (free download) from Happy Brown House.  What boy doesn't love cars?  And this game helps kids target colors, shapes, sight words, numbers, etc!









I made very cool Red White And Blue Strawberries (The Sisters Cafe) for a Fourth of July cookout at Grandpa's house...They were a hit, but I neglected to take pictures.  :(

We're also working on a list of "100 Things to Do This Summer" posted by Christina Williams, going to gymnastics, the zoo, the farm, the playground, story hour, summer festivals, etc., etc., etc.

Here's our To-Do list:

Making Slime

Bouncy Balls

Sand Dough

Home Made Ice Cream (in a Baggie!)

Just to mention a few!

How are you spending your summer?