The Toymaker

Today I'd like to share a link to a very generous toymaker. I'm sure all you creative SLP's out there can think of thousands of uses for these enchanting and FREE paper toys. They are delightful. I've posted a screen shot of the "holiday" portion of her website. You'll need a color printer, some cardstock and a PDF reader. Have fun at www.thetoymaker.com.

Fruits and Veggies

Here at my school we have a "Category of the Week" and this week's is 'vegetable'. I'm always surprised at how many of my students don't know the difference between a fruit and a vegetable. By the way, I don't even touch the whole tomato controversy. So, I made this game to go with a cut-n-paste fruit/veggie sort that I made and I also read one of the many veggie books out there - like David Wiesner's June 29, 1999

The game has a spinner and some produce cards the kids have to 'harvest'. Just click on the image to enlarge - the game is pretty self-evident as far as how to play. We make sentences, etc. I just pinched images from Google.

Down the picture and text file HERE.

Pumpkin Face Bottle Cap Game

We all have a TON of October/Fall activities don't we? I gottamillion of 'em and maybe I'll post them someday. It just so happens that I made this bottle cap activity today so I was motivated to pic-n-post. Here are the materials:



And here are the finished pumpkins:


I got the idea from The Mailbox (I think). They had you painting the bottle caps with glue and paint...but since I have an organized husband who uses multi colors of duct tape to color code tools, I just cut the tape and stuck it on. Bits of black plastic electrical tape were used for the face parts.

So..here is how you play, but of course the rules are open to variations. Before each turn,say your sound, answer a question, whatever. Then, throw the 5 lil pumpkins onto the floor (or table) and get a point for each one who lands face up. Alternatively you could use a sharpie and put numbers on the underside and use those for points, number of responses, etc.

Yes, Bass is my favorite beer!

Harry the Dirty Dog

And now for another special ed preK lesson, this time featuring Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion. What a classic.

I have lots of activities with this one, again featuring the Hands-on Reading literature books by Mayer-Johnson.

I start by reading the book and asking questions along the way. I adapted the last page so the kids can put Harry on his pillow...sort of.



Next we match the Clean and Dirty Harrys (the teachers all exchange smirks over that phrase). This was adapted from a scan at the end of the book.



Next we actually scrub and dry "Harry". I searched for a white and black plastic dog and was considering resorting to plush. In the end, I opted for this completely unHarry-like German Shepherd. The kids didn't seem to mind and there is NOTHING so fun as playing in soapy water.





Here are 2 more activities I prepared but didn't really have time for. The first is a 'wh' sheet from the MJ books - I cut them into strips and make booklets so there is a reduced amount of visual information at a time. The other is a Harry sequence - again from Hands-on Reading, but I used re-sized photocopies from the actually Harry book.