Pizza!

Back to school and back to blogging! It always takes me a few weeks to 're-calibrate' as I leave summer vacation behind.

Everyone loves pizza and there are loads of activities to do with a pizza unit. Pictured above are 2 of my favorites. One is a math pizza puzzle - the kids assemble it as they make responses. It is such a simple thing, but kids love it! The other activity, Pizza Plate, works well for language or artic responses. I cut out rough - very rough, one might even say abstract - representations of pizza toppings from construction paper. Then I have the kids use red and brown crayons to put "sauce" and "crust" on the "dough". Then they request and glue various toppings. I also have a rolling pin they use to flatten the paper plate (roll the dough) before coloring.

I always like to have some literature tie-in and depending on the age of my group, I use one of the following books:


Pete's a Pizza by William Steig This is especially good for preK because they love to be 'rolled' like Pete.

The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza)by
Philemon Sturges

Curious George and the Pizza

Finally, I love to make little English muffin pizzas with my special ed preK class. We have a toaster oven in the class and I just use English muffins, sauce and preshredded mozzarella cheese. I have a Tech Talk set up for requesting ingredients.

If you have any other great pizza ideas, please leave a comment!

Using my ipod.

I downloaded Appzilla for my new ipod, which has a feature called "Buzzer". Appzilla costs .99 and has 50 neat, but mostly useless little mini-apps. However, I do use it in therapy as a self-monitoring tool. The kids monitor my articulation and grammar - and their own. If I didn't change activities, I think they could have 'buzzed' each other for the whole 30 minute session.

When you open the app, there is a crowd cheer sound. And, as you probably guessed, the green button makes a happy "ding!" and the red button makes an annoying "buzzzz".

This is a pretty simple use of technology in therapy. For a really high-tech take on some neat gadgets, check out the Geek SLP blog!

One Cut Books

Many thanks to Judy Kuster (who has a wealth of links on her site) for this link to One Cut Books. Kids love having little books they can hold and take home and these are a nice break from the cut-n-paste worksheets.

It would be so easy to make a word doc template for these and just go crazy!

Tools

One of my favorite units of the year is my Tool Unit. I bring real tools, fasteners and wood to use, even with my preK students! Closely supervised, they enjoy and safely use the hand drill, saw, screwdrivers and hammer. I have large bolts they can put nuts off and on, screws embedded into a piece of wood they can turn in and out, and thin pieces of wood they can saw. I use the books that are pictured and also these bingo boards, which you can download.

Here is a picture of the bingo:















Here are links to 4 different bingo boards (.docs):

Tool Bingo 1
Tool Bingo 2
Tool Bingo 3
Tool Bingo 4


Real kids! Real tools!













The books I use:

Website Roundup

Before I started this blog, I trolled the web for different therapy sites and blogs, looking for a therapy "activities" resource. Here is a list of the best of what I found:

I think the number one speech therapy site out there is Caroline Bowen's. She has a great list of activities and resources as well as lots of tips and other stuff.

Sharing the number one spot is Speaking of Speech. Here you will find a goal bank, lots of ideas, and an active forum.

Another comprehensive site is Communication Connects.

Quia can be a little difficult to navigate, but there are a few interesting speech games on this site. I'd say it is mostly for older kids though.

It is a bit dated as far as easy-to-read website design, but the Geezer's site is worth a little time exploring. He basically wants to sell you his materials, but there are some free things there.

Then we have your basic overwhelming list of therapy ideas here and here.

So happy browsing! (in your spare time haha). Please post your own favorites that I may have missed in the comments.

Photo courtesy of Mantasmagorical via Morguefile.com. (oh that sounds creepy but it's not really).

Everybody Loves Animals - Part 1

I suppose we all have tons of activities about animals. Please feel free to post your favorites in the comments. I'm hoping to post several of my very best over the next month.



This was a simple lesson I did with my special ed prek. First, we put all the puzzles together and talked a bit/asked questions about each one. Then I pulled the battery-operated yipping dog from my bag (very high interest as you can imagine!). The kids each practiced saying/touching the words on the sentence strip.

Valentine's Day!

Like most holidays, Valentimz (haha) has a wealth of activities. Here are 2 of my favorites!

Please contact me if you would like these files in PDF instead of images!

First, a little Dinosaur - see the upside-down hearts? Cute, eh?


I originally got this idea from Mailbox magazine. Here are scans of the blanks for the dinosaur and the hearts, both of which I copy onto construction paper.


And here is a bingo game, which I love for both language and artic. I printed out one board to make the cards. I have the kids pick a card and describe it and the other players have to guess which one it is. I always use Chipper Chat chips and wands - magnets are just so exciting!



I've uploaded 4 different board layouts, if you'd like to download and print them.
Board 1
Board 2
Board 3
Board 4

Speech Lab Documents

Well, this is a pretty dry little post - no pictures! Here are the Word Docs I developed for my Speech Lab:

Description

Parent Permission

Data Collection

Hope that helps!

Groundhog Day

This is my favorite book for Groundhog Day! There are so many great 'wh' questions and prediction questions.

After reading, there a are a few groundhog crafts and cut-n-pastes you could do. Or, doing a sequence activity (holiday or months) would tie in nicely with this book.

Here are the questions I ask through the book:

1. First I make sure they are somewhat familiar with what GH Day is all about. Then we talk about hibernating.

2. Why is GH reading "How to hibernate?". Sometimes we come back and review if that book helped him or not.

3. When is Columbus Day? Why is he brushing his teeth? What will he do next?

4. He set his clock for Feb 2nd. Is that how our clocks work?

5. Half past October - what will he see on the next page (I ask this preceeding every holiday shown).

6. It is Halloween- how do you know? (I ask this for each holiday).

7. After we've established that he gets a ride home, I ask for predictions about 'who' will give him a ride at each holiday.

8.Other questions - what season is it? how do you know?

9. What does "make yourself scarce" mean and why does the turkey want to do that?

10. Also after each line noting that "GH had never seen this before", I ask why not? We discuss how, for every winter before, the GH had slept through all the holidays pictured.

11. Why is he reading a book about gardening?

Clothing Unit Part I

There is SO much that can be done with a Clothing Unit! Of course, there are many books, such as "Jesse Bear, What will you wear?" and "The Jacket I wear in the Snow". I'll try to make a book list in my next post on Clothing. I like to do my clothing unit in January, and tie in seasonal clothing as well.

There are hundreds of worksheets and activities I could post, but this clothesline activity is always popular. My students will play this again and again - I get bored long before they do.

I start by 'washing' the clothes in my 'washing machine' (the clothes are in a decorated folder and we just shake them around). Then we go through hanging and unhanging each item. For artic kids, they say target sounds before choosing what they want to hang.

For language, it varies by goals. Here are some things I've done:
-make a riddle for each item
-the student describes what they want and I guess
-students compose a sentence about the clothing or when it is worn
-ask a 'wh' question such as "when do we wear pajamas".

For some of my students, it is quite a fine motor workout as well - clothes pins are pretty tricky for prek!

I made my clothes out of construction paper and laminated them. It might also be fun to go to a thrift store and get REAL baby/toddler clothes to hang. If you'd like to try printing out your own, I've scanned mine in this ZIP file - CLICK HERE FOR CLOTHES.

Here is the TechTalk grid I made for this unit - mostly used as a matching activity.






Please leave a comment if you have other ideas for using clothes for unit activities.

Product Review: Phonology and Artic Fun Sheets

Don't you just hate it when you order materials with your precious budget money and they stink! The books or games sit on your shelf, year after year, taunting you.

For me, this was definitely NOT one of those items. I use these worksheets almost every therapy session. The themes cover almost everything: pets, gardens, animals, seasons, holidays. I love this book and if you do a lot of cut-n-paste (which I do ti generate homework) then you just might love this book. Below is my own "view inside" since Amazon doesn't have one.