RWAAAR! Monster!

I have already shared some of my Halloween activities in previous posts, but I wanted to make sure you had the chance to see this fun activity. We are making monsters. RWAAAAR!

I got the idea here from No Time for Flashcards.

It is really simple, and the kids enjoyed making these scary guys. I am lucky enough to have an assistant to do (almost) all of my copying, laminating, prep, etc. So, she had the hand-cramping task of cutting all the monsters out over the past few weeks. Kind of a cr*ppy job. And yes, I got her some chocolate to fuel her along.  But, I need every minute of my speech session to work with students, so I don't want to spend a bunch of time on cutting. 

Anyway, here are the steps!

Step 1: Find someone to cut out the monsters for you. Provide chocolate and/or coffee to fuel the cutting.

Step 2: After the student completes a therapy task (ie: says a word 5x, uses a complete sentence, etc.), he or she can add one paint dot. This goes on and on until the student feels they have enough paint dots on the monster.

Step 3: The therapist adds a bunch of glue dots all over the monster.

Step 4: After the student completes a therapy task (ie: says a word 5x, uses a complete sentence, etc.), he or she can add one googlie eye. This goes on and on until the therapist feels therapy is done. And, when the student feels they have enough googlie eyes on the monster.

Step 5: Let the monsters dry and decorate your speech room. OOoooooooohhhhhh. So spooky!

Hope you try making these scary dudes with your students. And don't forget to check out my Halloween {Speech and Language} Craftivity on my TPT shop. Your kids will love it too!

Happy Halloween!

October in the Speech Room

I am excited to share with you my bulletin boards for October. This kids are digging them, and I hope you do to. 

The first section is a candy-corn survey. I can't believe so many kids LIKE candy-corn. Gross. This question led us into one of the craftivities that we have been making in speech. 

For those working on articulation goals, they have been putting together these cute candy-corns. I have created a craftivity set for my TPT store that includes all the printables and instructions for this activity. Check it out here.

They look adorable floating around the room.

Each year, I use this haunted house to target prepositions and concepts. The students follow my directions on where to put the sticker ghosts. I laminated the haunted house, so when the student leaves speech, I can easily pull the stickers off with minimal damage. I have been using the same haunted house for a few years, and it is holding up well! 

Last, but not least, are our mummies.  This is the second portion of my new craftivity in my TPT store. Get it here and start the fun in speech today!

For my SIX students with fluency/stuttering goals (I know right, SIX is a lot!), we are practicing strategies while decorating these sticker pages from Oriental Trading Company. 

All the kids have been doing spooky activities that I have collected and created over the years. Lots of stuff from Pinterest and TPT.

Before you go, take a look at my new Halloween {Speech and Language} Craftivity. It's only $2! You will get everything you need to make the Mummy and Giant Candy Corn, both featured in this blog post. Here is a little preview of what is included:

Oh, and here are my cute kids at the pumpkin patch ;)

Speech Room September and August

Hello everyone! I wanted to share a few pictures of my bulletin boards that I had up for September and August. I went with an Inside Out theme, and the kids were so stoked! I even made a few activities for articulation, language, and pragmatics. Check them out in my TPT shop here.

I have three divide boards to feature different activities and topics as the year moves along. For now, it is all about Inside Out.

Jill Kuzma's "size of the problem" set is featured here:

Riley and her memories: 

Character traits:

It has been a fun theme, but now it is time to move onto Halloween. Check back soon for some spooky ideas and decor!

Welcome Back 2015/2016 SLPs!

 Hello! I am off and running this year and excited to share my new themes and ideas. I want to give you a small preview of what I have goin' on in the speech room. 

Have you seen Inside Out? This movie is absolutely amaze-balls and perfect for SLPs! I am using this as my theme to get the year started and talk about feelings. This is what I have on my bulletin boards so far:

These mini posters will soon be in my TPT shop!

This set goes with the Zones of Regulation curriculum and is a freebie from Jill Kuzma. Check it out here.

What's on your mind?

To go with this fun theme, I am also working on a social language pack for my students, as well as my TPT store. I am setting a goal for  myself to make it live by Friday! Here is a preview:

Check back tomorrow for an exciting celebration for my friend and colleague over at A View into my Classroom. It is going to be fun, with an awesome giveaway!
 

March in the Speech Room

Okay, so it is the last full week of March. But, this is what was happening in the speech room! Soon it will be April, so things will be a bit different. In fact, I am making some changes to the overall layout and design of my room. Check back soon for pictures!

Anyway, back to March.

Did you know that March 2nd is Dr. Seuss' birthday? And that it is also Read Across America Day? Think that is a coincidence? I think not!

I scoured Pinterest and got a lot of inspiration for my bulletin boards this month. The first features our old friend the Lorax with his beloved Truffula trees. 

Next was the bulletin board that alluded most of my students. I heard a lot of "What does 'Do you like and ham mean?'"

I mean really!

I thought this was pretty clever and obvious! "Do you Like Green Eggs and Ham?"

To go with the green egg theme, I picked up these foam eggs from Target to make synonym/antonym pairs. A couple of my speech groups found the matches to the broken eggs and put them on the board. The synonyms have straight cuts, and the antonyms have zig-zag cuts.

To round out the Dr. Seuss theme, we made hats and graphed goldfish crackers. 

The hats were used to target a variety of goals, such as feelings, articulation, categories, and adjectives. I furiously wrote on tiny pieces of paper while they practiced their goal. Then, they glued the little red bits onto the hat to make stripes. They look great in my window!

The tastiest part of the past few weeks (if you like goldfish) was graphing colorful goldfish crackers for this "One fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" activity. I found the worksheet here for free from Kteachertaggart. The students placed their colorful goldfish crackers on the drawings of fish. We then filled out the bar graph with the corresponding information. I made label stickers for each student to further describe the graph with words such as: most, least, top, bottom, equal, same, longest, shortest, top, bottom, favorite. When we were done with all that work, they got to eat the crackers while they colored the the fish on their page to match the graph. 

It has been a fun month, but I am looking forward to the changes I have planned for my room. Hope to see you back here soon!

January in the Speech Room

January is almost over. My winter bulletin boards will come down on Friday to get ready for February. But, I wanted to share what we did this month. I went with a snowy theme, even though we were enjoying 75+degree weather. Yes, a heatwave. Not a real surprise here in California. Our best weather is usually in January. Summers can be pretty foggy. 

Anyway, I digress. Let's get back to business!

One of my bulletin boards displayed a hot cocoa survey and mugs. I was inspired by these ideas: link and link. I asked (almost) all of the speech kids if they like hot cocoa, and added their name to either "yes" or "no" column. The two students who said "no" don't like hot cocoa, just warm cocoa.

The kids with articulation goals made hot cocoa. I have to admit, they were all a little disappointed that it wasn't real hot chocolate. 

For the small mugs, I found an image online shaped like a mug, printed it on blue paper, and made marshmallows with typed target words. Next, we did the same thing we always do: they practiced the words on the marshmallows, and glued them onto the hot chocolate.

Yum!

My winter scene bulletin board, Talking in a Winter Wonderland, features mittens and snow globes. Here is before:

And here is now:

The mittens are synonym pairs that the students matched and hung with tiny clothespins on the board. I found the idea here and made my own set with the die-cut machine at our school.

Next up: Snow Globes. These have been the talk of the school. Pretty cute. I found similar ideas here and here and here, and adapted them to work with my supplies. I ordered all of the winter stickers, gems, and snowflakes from Oriental Trading Company. Here are the links: stickers (sold out), gems, snowflakes (sold out).  I had the hardest time finding clear plastic plates. The plates are from Amazon and are 6inches around. An affiliate link is provided for your convenience on my side bar.  The snowy balls are from the Dollar Tree.

  
Here are the steps!

Step 1: Find a cute kid to come to therapy. After each therapeutic turn, the student can add a winter sticker, gem, or snowflake.

Step 2: Pour snowballs in the plate.

Step 3: Put a lot of glue on the edge.

Like this

Step 4: Flip the snow globe over so that it is upside down and the snowy scene will show through the plate.

Step 5: Set the snow globe on the plate.

Step 6: Gently press the snow globe to the plate. Ensure that the glue is on the entire circumference of the globe.

Step 7: Let the snow globe dry overnight.

Step 8: Hang and enjoy!

Do you want to build a snowman? I can't stop singing that song. Luckily for my students, I am singing in my head. I got this freebie from That Fun Reading Teacher on TPT here. I modified the activity a little bit to expand on adjectives and comparatives/superlatives. We talked about all the different ways we could describe the sizes of the snowballs that made the snowman. Then, they chose which words they wanted to use to describe their snowman. Add a little color, and Ta Da! A snowman!

Last month we did some scratch and reveal pages that I found on Oriental Trading Company. You can read about that activity here. It was super popular, so I decided to do it again to go with the winter theme this month. I found these at Oriental Trading Company but they are sold out. Sorry! 

I feel like I am repeating myself, but this is how we roll. Students completed their turn on whatever they are working on, and got to scratch off one portion of the picture. Something great about this activity is that it takes a little bit of time to scratch off a portion of the picture. So, I get a lot of time during each turn to practice with a student in the group while the other student is scratching and revealing their picture. A happy accident!

Happy winter, see you soon for more activity updates and February bulletin boards!