Spring Has Hatched or so I thought :)

Well I am officially on Spring Break... but wanted to catch up with a post about our first spring craft that my students made.... Spring Chicks!

I started with my prek crew and they loved it.  We worked on recognizing the parts of my "model" chick and they had to name all the materials we needed.  This led me to practice labeling the parts of our chicks.  After they identified all the parts and materials they needed, they practiced requesting those items.  We also talked about positional concepts to help identify the location of the parts (below the chick's eyes, behind the plate, top/bottom).  They all loved this activity.

My next crew that joined in on the chick fun were my K crew.  With this group we continued our work with the EET ... Expanding Expression Tool.  First we used the EET to describe chicks and each student took a turn with each bead.  These students have been working on telling the function or what we do with objects.  They had to provide the function of a named object to earn the pieces of their chick.  Once they had all the parts of their chick they created the chicks by following 2 step directions that I provided to them.  Amazing what fun comes from a simple craft.  I always have to remind myself to use the KISS principal... keep it simple silly!

I then finished out my week with some of my older (3rd and 4th grade) articulation students who just like my prek and K crew members LOVED creating the chick as well.  I wasn't sure if they would think it was "babyish" but NO they all wanted to make one.

Some other students with my SLP partner Clare made some nests and that rounded out our Spring display.  Really brightened up our hallway!

NOW all we need is our warm temperatures back and then Spring will really be hatched!

Almost the End of March! OH MY!

Well it has been a busy month that has moved along at an insanely fast pace!  To celebrate Dr Seuss' birthday I used the book 10 Apples up on Top.  In Preschool we have been working on spatial concepts so I thought this would work out great for that crew... and then my K-4 kiddos have been working a variety of goals so I new I could adapt and use it for everyone.

We made a tiger art projects... they all loved it...

For some of my students we worked on following directions... put the orange circle on the bottom of the white paper.  Then they had to follow directions to add all the pieces of the tiger's face.

For my articulation students, they earned apples to add to the tiger after they practiced their targets.

Some of my students worked on identifying the rhymes in the story.  

I find my "older"  students (grade 3& 4) absolutely LOVE to do simple crafts!  They never seem to think they are too old for it... instead I get a cheer.

It was an easy way to target so many goals with one activity... which I LOVE!

We hung them up outside the speech room.

So it was a success!  They love seeing their artwork hanging up and this week is Open House so they will be happy to show it off!

Hope everyone had some fun celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday this month.

PREK Game review - Thinkfun Smatch

I LOVE incorporating games into my therapy and discovering new games.   So I thought I would share one that isn't so new but I haven't pulled out in a while…. so to my little kiddos it was NEW!


SMATCH by Thinkfun!  Basically it is a matching game, but to make a match you need to spin the spinner and the spin dictates if you have to make a match by color, number, or group.

Normally I would have the cards turned over  to hide the pictures.  But since today was the first time I was playing it with this particular group of PREK loves I had the cards facing up to make it easier to become familiar with the game.

They LOVED being able to push down on the spinner to tell what type of match they should make.  Even how to operate the spinner became a lesson in following directions :).  You could also work on plurals because you are either matching a picture of one item or two…. so it is perfect for that goals as well.

I am thinking that I could even create additional category and number cards to expand the game. 

What is your favorite game to use in therapy?

Andrea

Ringing in the New Year!

Finally we are back in school!  We did have one day last week and then a snow day on Friday.  So we are starting off with some New Year celebrating in PreK. 

Today we had  fun wearing New Year's Eve glasses during therapy... the kiddos just loved them.  We walked down the hall with them and they wished everyone they met "Happy New Year"!  It was a blast and a great way for them to practice greeting others.  They all used great eye contact too, as they wanted to make sure that everyone noticed their "NEW GLASSES".  Who would have guessed they would be so useful.  HMMM maybe there should be glasses for every holiday :)

Here is  a pic of my son and I wearing the glasses on New Year's Eve

Sparkling cider in the "clinky" glasses to ring in the New Year!

Since we have been on vacation for two weeks I wanted to do something simple to help everyone get back into the groove of school.   So I found a freebie online of a New Year's party hat with some blank dots.  Here is the link for the New Year's party hat.

We practiced following some simple directions:

"color one dot blue and one dot red" or "color two dots yellow"

They also had to make choices of color crayons. 

It was an easy way to get back into the routine of school and practice following directions, pragmatics and some fine motor.  Plus they really had a lot of fun wearing the sparkly glasses!


Happy New Year!

Andrea

Need to make a commitment

So I started the school year thinking I would use this blog to help me create a diary of my therapy activities and ideas.  Well then the school year actually began and boy did time fly.  So as much as I am happy that I actually started the blog… I need to get a system to actually post and write for the blog.  I really am in awe of all the bloggers I follow that post weekly or even more frequently then that.

So here is to a new year and maybe some more time to blog.  I think I will seek out some guidance from those amazing blogging SLP's that I follow for some tips on posting more frequently.  Oh and for a challenge here is my first attempt at using a graphic.  I am so jealous of these beautiful blogs out there so I decided to try to jazz my post up with a freebie from The 3AM Teacher.  It took me a little bit to figure out how to do it but here it is :)… Hurray!  If you want to check out her blog here is the link… the 3AM teacher

graphics from 

A little something from the speech room

We started a "100 Day contest" a few years ago and found that the some of our students love it. Basically it is an extra contest that my student's can decide to participate in.  It is only for artic kiddos and it basically is a challenge to see if they can practice 2-3 minutes a day for 100 consecutive days.  There is no pressure to participate and when they complete the challenge they receive a prize from the 100 day prize box... which has "higher" quality prizes.  For those competitive kiddos this has been a great incentive and has helped some of my students exit from artic therapy pretty quickly!  Hurray!

There is a chart in the speech room where they track their progress along and this is an additional incentive for the 100 day participants.  They don't want to fall behind.  Oh I forgot to mention the one big rule that was hard to enforce at first....... if you miss a day of practice (with the exception of illness) they have to start all over.  They never complain since I explain this rule from the very beginning.  They just jump right back in.  What a great way to develop perseverance!

All of my students obviously have a chance to win points for a speech prize by doing their assigned homework, trying their best in speech, using good listening skills, and bringing their speech book with them to the session.  This is just an added incentive that seems to push some kids to increase the frequency of their practice.

This is the back of the speech room door.

The start of something new! New school year .... new blog!

So I am finally taking the plunge and starting a blog all about  speech and language. After following several blogs over the past year I am inspired to start one as a challenge for myself as a therapist.  I figured it is the start of a new school year so let's start my blog too!   The name "chat play learn" felt like the right one because it really sums up what I do all day as an SLP.   I do think I am very fortunate to be able to do this for a living and learn something new every day from the little cherubs I see.

So I am hoping that someone will find my posts interesting and creative.  Hopefully some parents will also discover this blog as a resource of activities that they can use at home as their child develops  speech and language skills.  I have always thought that all children can benefit from the types of activities we use as SLPs.

So here I go..... finally jumping into the world of blogging.

Andrea