Lately

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade because sometimes the situation just is what it is....at least that has been my motto to some degree this year. Not because of my job--- my job is often the cure for the craziness that is family (mostly on one side). It's my refuge during the day and my little puppy family is my refuge at night. So I apologize to you for not being consistent in blogging. I don't like to get very personal on here so all I will say is that we are starting to look for a house or an apartment to give me a buffer from some very unneeded stress. We've also booked our one-year anniversary trip back to Disney! I cannot wait to get back to the Magic Kingdom and enjoy some carefree time. 

In the meantime, I thought I would share some pictures of things around my room that I love. Things that make me smile when no one else is around. 

My weekly EETchy bulletin board. We haven't gone through all of the strands yet, but I think it's important for them to see how it's going to eventually progress. Each session, we do one card together on my whiteboard and we put Thursday's card on display.

One of my fall thrift store finds. This desk divider was $20 at a local thrift shop that funds programs for men recovering from substance abuse. I walked away from it until I saw that they're over $100 on Amazon. I have word lists for all of my most frequently taught sounds and then I taped some names that I can use for phrases or sentences. The word lists are all free on TPT:

1. Articulation Word Lists for 15 Sounds
2.Free Phoneme Word Lists
3.Vocalic R Word List

Lastly, one of my summer thrift store finds. My best guess is that it's supposed to be a purse organizer. It has some little loops to hook on to something. I bought it knowing that it looked like something I could put homemade cards or craft supplies in. I ended up using it for phrase strips, calendar pieces, and a few of my hand-made social skills materials.

Seeing hearts?

As the weather turns colder (and snow finally decides to hit), I am looking towards the end of winter. I think this time of the year is hard in a way that can come as a surprise. IEPs are manageable and the assessment frenzy is still a little bit off in the distance. It's just the thinking process that starts now. The knowing that in a few months I will be sending students off to middle school or elementary school with goals that someone else has to use. Will they understand why I did things the way I did? Or will they think that my goals are terrible? I know that I was certainly guilty of not liking the way things were written by one of the SLPs who left my school last year. 

It brings me back to my social skills groups. Thinking about how other people perceive you is hard. Yet, we have to do it all the time. So why not get a head start on one of the trickiest holidays of all?

Take Heart! is a simple social skills activity to identify which action is an expected/unexpected behavior. When they pull out an unexpected behavior, students can use their predicting skills to come up with possible outcomes. They can also tell you a way to fix the unexpected behavior.

You can grab your free copy of Take Heart here!

It's a new year and that brings new adventures....

One thing that I have done differently this school year, is to work more on basic social skills in the cafeteria. I will be the first to admit that I was a little naive when I started out with my lunch bunch. I had never needed to do one at my previous school. However, going in there has really opened my eyes to how my students function outside of my speech room. Sometimes it is a really rewarding experience and other times I realize how little of a week's lesson actually paid off. 

For the first freebie of 2016, I thought I would share a little social story that I had to create recently to address some unpleasant habits that occur because of the reactions they get. 

The challenge in sharing this activity is the pictures. You will need to use your own images as I used a combination of magazine pictures and google images. However, you don't have to write the story! 

The story targets the following:

- Eating with a closed mouth

- Spitting out food

-Following the class routine 

Grab your copy of Don't Be a Yucky Eater here.