It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

I can't believe that it's already December! It seems like 2017 has flown by. It has definitely been an interesting year. I've given a presentation at a state level conference, discovered Project CORE, seen several wonderful coworkers move on to new positions, and started making a professional development notebook. I am grateful for the challenges and learning opportunities that I've had this year.

I am wrapping up this year with a month full of crafts. We are going to make paper chains with our articulation words to decorate my door and trees for the hallway. I cannot wait to get it finished as I continue to struggle to find a place to keep what we've done so far.

Here are some freebies that I'm using with my students this month:
1. The 12 Days of Christmas articulation craft. I am actually using this in a different manner to talk about gratitude. We brainstormed things that we are thankful to have and wrote them down on our papers. 
2. Reader's theatre: Bob the Goofy Reindeer. I am using this to target articulation and reading comprehension.
3. Christmas Search. While this is geared towards articulation, it is also a great activity to talk about holiday vocabulary words and work on following directions with coloring.
4. Christmas similes and metaphors task cards.
5. Christmas Clues. This is great for inferencing.
6. Christmas reinforcement worksheets. I love the roll and color sheets in this packet.
7. Christmas interactive book. Students have to find the sweater based on the description.
8. Christmas around the world. I use this with my older students to talk about other cultures. I found this beautiful  New Zeland wreath craft to use this year.

Thankful for pronouns

November always seems to rush by in a blur of IEP meetings, regular staff meetings, special activities, and holiday gathering. It is no small wonder why I have been looking for a few quick activities to pair with fall themed books for my language groups. This activity was actually inspired my old pronoun book creation. I pulled it out a few weeks ago and decided that we still needed more structured practice. So here is a Thanksgiving creation from my speech room to yours....Hope you enjoy!

Included in this activity are four sheets for structured pronoun practice. Students have to label the person using either he or she and then decide which item that person might be thankful for during the fall. Most of the pictures are related to fall and can be used to target fall vocabulary. 

I have also included a page with a boy and girl pilgrim to be used as a magazine sorting activity. In similar fashion to the structured pages, students should tell you sentences as they make a thankful collage.

You can grab your copy of Giving our Thanks here.

Fun Facts for New Year's Day

Christmas is over! I've survived shopping on Christmas Eve and the day after without a scratch. Serena is the proud owner of a new sheep squeak toy and I have a few more keepsakes from Old Salem, NC. The countdown is now on for my first ever professional presentation to teachers at the district's second professional development conference. (I have to say that I really didn't enjoy last year's meager offerings, but this year the list looks huge!) Luckily, I will be presenting with two other district SLPs in front of a group of only 25 teachers. We will be talking about our role in the schools and how we address Common Core. 

Speaking of countdowns, I decided that I really wasn't too happy with my lack of materials for New Year's day. The majority of the afternoon was spent scouring the internet for interesting facts and activities related to the topic. The final result is a packet aimed at getting my older students back into the routine. It includes cards about the New Year, an open-ended dot sheet for reinforcement, and resolution bookmarks. You can grab your copy of it here.

Looking beyond....

It's been an interesting week so far. I had a nasty stomach bug over the weekend and it's taken me until today to finally feel back to my usual self. As a result, I have been one very scatterbrained therapist these past two days and trying to play catch-up from my sick day. My students probably think an alien has taken over my brain. Then again, they're so excited about the prospects of reeling in a big haul of candy that nothing else really matters at this point. 

It seems like moods are running a little bit high at work this week. I got fussed at today for pulling a student on my normal day at my normal time. It's the first time that I've ever had to deal with this kind of reaction to me holding a group and it was a bit shocking. It was also a touch humiliating as the person made a small scene in front of a class of students. Hopefully, it's just pre-fall benchmark jitters and not something that will continue to occur. 

So to soothe my emotions and take a much needed mental vacation from all things Fall, I made this preposition activity. It's very similar to the spooky prepositions activity that I made for the Spooky Fun Frenzy. The file is black and white so students can color selected targets and to avoid the need of color ink. 

You can grab a copy of Snowy Prepositions here.

Halloween creepiness part 2 with delightful "hands on" practice

It's been a "short" week of school. We had two days of professional development, which is both a blessing and a curse. I managed to do the following: get caught up on my Medicaid billing, made some more Super Duper product posters for my 3+ month of laminating fun, pulled out my Halloween books, attempted to draw pictures to use for sequencing with the Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat, and started up another pinterest inspired craft. This list may sound pretty funny to people who are just curious about the field or unfamiliar with the realm of school-based therapy but these things take more time than I care to think about. 

Luckily, most of my students came back with refreshed minds and happy hearts. It was good to be back in session with them. They helped me find a new Halloween favorite: The 13 Nights of Halloween. I picked this book up back in January of last year at Goodwill. The concept is very similar to the 12 Days of Christmas song. You have 13 nights of a tiny pink goblin gifting odd and creepy presents. We used the Expanding Expression Tool to talk about some of these gifts (ie. owls, vampires, witches) and then played an exciting round of cat-EAR-gories. 

I also introduced my syntax groups to my second Halloween DIY project: Gross Parts of Speech. I picked up the fingers from the Dollar Tree earlier this month. All it takes is a sharpie and 10 minutes of writing. Toss them into a mystery box and you are ready to go. 

I had a few students who were really grossed out at first, but they were begging for thumbs and pinkies by the end of the lesson.

My new favorite song of the moment......

It's time for some cat-EAR-gories.

I promised that I had a few spooky ideas for Halloween this year. This is the first of two DIY projects that I came up with for this year. I found the ears at the Dollar Tree and knew that I had to do something with them. My caseload is full of students with categorization goals and the gross factor is a huge motivator for the boys. 

 All I needed was a Sharpie and several packs of ears. It took about an hour to come up with the Halloween-related categories. (I'm a stickler for wanting my seasonal stuff to stay true to the season.)

My students have to name 3-4 items in the category based off of the ear they pull out of the witch's cauldron. You can throw Ned's Head game pieces in the mix to add the opportunity to target other goals via bonus points (or just say that they get another turn/lose a turn). 

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble

I love Halloween. There's no real rhyme or reason to why I love the spookiest holiday out there when I'm a total chicken who screams at the sight of even the smallest of the small spiders. The only Halloween movie I'll watch without wimping out is Double, Double, Toil and Trouble featuring the Olson twins.

I have several fun things to share with you this month, but I thought I would kick it off with an idea born from Walmart. 

I found these little zombies in the big bins of Halloween party goods. I couldn't resist buying three packs (of 4) for .97 cents each. I blame liking creepy finger puppets on my grandmother. She always had a supply of them (aliens) when I was younger. It brought back lots of pleasant childhood memories, which is one of my rules of thumb when shopping for therapy supplies. Children can still find wonder in these tiny little objects even if we do spend more time waving I-pads and computers in their faces rather than actual toys. The zombies will serve mostly as a reinforcer for the younger groups, but my older students will have to earn them in a more game-like approach. 

I created a short file called, Zombies Among Us, which focuses on syntax. It's black and white so my students can color the zombie face for the correct part of speech using Colorful Semantics. We're focusing on nouns, verbs, and adjectives so the color choice is limited to orange, yellow, and purple.  I also threw in some describing tasks in the hopes of getting them to spark up conversations with each other. They earn a zombie for every 3-5 cards they complete. I plan on letting them swap a task card by giving up a zombie in the hopes of avoiding the terrible "I don't know." 

If you are daring enough to witness my artistic capabilities with the zombie images, you can download the freebie here.  

Vocabulary is going to the leaves.....

All the leaves are falling down

Falling down, falling down.

All the leaves are falling down,

It is fall time.

They are yellow, red and brown,

Red and brown, red and brown.

They are yellow, red and brown.

It is fall time.

Take the leaves and crunch them up,

Crunch them up, crunch them up.

Take the leaves and crunch them up.

It is fall time.

One bag of fabric leaves from the dollar store, one black sharpie, and Googling fall vocabulary words.

Deciding which words are Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III. 

Write on the leaves with paper underneath in case of ink bleeding through the thin fabric.

Wrap them up and pick some books.

Use them with the Expanding Expression Tool.

These are the ones I'm leaning towards this year:
Fall Book List
1. Mouse's First Fall (PreK-1st)
2. Let it Fall (PreK-1st)
3. It's Fall (PreK-1st)
4. Leaf Man (PreK-3rd)
5. Fall Mixed Up (PreK-?)

Thanksgiving
1. The Littlest Pilgrim (PreK-2nd)
2. Ten Fat Turkeys (PreK-1st)
3. I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie (PreK-2nd)
4. Thanksgiving Is... (2nd-5th)
5. If You Were At the First Thanksgiving (2nd-5th)
6. If You Sailed on the Mayflower (2nd-5th)