A-HA Moment: Picture Frame = Barrier Game

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I recently was cleaning out a random storage box and found this one of those plastic picture frames. It was empty and the SLP wheels started turning. A-HA! It's perfect for a barrier game setup. Oh, and really cheap!

I  made a simple background in powerpoint with graphics from My Cute Graphics (free) and printed 2 copies. I have the Melissa and Doug reusable stickers (pictured below) so I pulled those out to use.  I made sure to have 2 of the same item so that each student can have one. 

If you'd like to try this out, I have some free backgrounds for you! My picture frame is 10 inches high x 6.5 inches wide, so I made the pictures to fit those dimensions, but you could easily make your own if you have bigger ones. Grab your copy here: 

There is one for outside, under the sea, and a room in a house. 

The person sitting on the "backside" of the frame sees a slightly different image, so you might want to place your student on the "inside," but I don't think it's that bad! And who can argue with reusing something?!

A-HA Moment: Penlight Double Duty

Penlights! We all have them, no? They are those wonderful little tools for looking (or not looking, depending on the willingness of the child) into mouths to check for adequate structure and function! I have a boring gray one, but some apparently come in fun colors!

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So I happened to be working with a student on identifying key words. For whatever reason, I had my penlight on my desk and suddenly had a good idea. It's sort of the magic of those fun little secret decoder from Super Duper:

I grabbed the penlight and told my student he needed to shin the light on the key words! BINGO! Motivation appeared out of nowhere and he became much more engaged in the task. I think I'll be using this idea much more often now!

Love those A-HA moments! :)

A-HA Moment: UNO

It happened again! Just browsing through some of my games, I noticed an Uno game that I rarely pull out. I was just in some kindergarten classrooms where they are learning to sort by color, shape, etc. It hit me then...I can help foster these skills and practice speech skills at the same time!! 

How?!

Pull out a green, red, yellow, and blue piece of construction paper and lay on the floor (I took the picture before I did this). Separate out just the number cards and shuffle. Have your students take turns picking a card, matching the color and then sneak in some speech/language! Say the number of words on the card, answer a WH question, follow a direction (or two) before matching the card to the paper color. Score!! Recycled game fun! I'm surprised it hadn't come to me before!!

I love hearing about your A-HA moments! Had any good ones lately?!