Halloween Round-Up

It's that time of year again - costumes, candy, and spooky fun! Here are some seasonal activities you can use to add some Halloween fun to your sessions:

October Mystery: This is only available for the month of October! You can also enter a special giveaway just for purchasing!

Mummy Madness: This is a freebie! It's fairly open-ended and can be used for describing, making sentences, writing a story, etc. 

Pumpkin Irregular Plurals: This is also free and focuses on those irregular plurals that change the "f" to a "v." There is a cute poem that can help your students remember the rule. 

Batty Associations: This is an original mini-book and activities that has some Halloween vocabulary.

Some other freebies that I've seen pop up from fellow SLP bloggers include:

Cooking:

Spooky, Toothy Halloween Treat Freebie from Speech Snacks

Books:

Room on the Broom freebie from The Speech Bubble

Misc:

Halloween Riddles from Major Speech Pathology By A Minor Girl

Open-Ended Games:

Boo! A Spooky Ghost Game from thedabblingspeechie

Halloween Open Ended Game by Dean Trout

Candy Corn Speech from Lauren LaCour

Grammar:

Halloween Grammar Freebie from Nicole Allison

Ghostly Grammar from Speech Time Fun

Artic:

Vocalic R Halloween Fortunes by Courtney Gragg
Spooky Speech by Sublime Speech

Language/Vocabulary:

Halloween Memory by Carrie Manchester

Scary Simile Jack-o-Lanterns by WordNerdSpeechTeach

Monster Describing and Guessing Game by Super Power Speech
Halloween Idioms and Phrases from Jenna Rayburn

These should keep you well-stocked for the coming weeks! Reminder: if you download any of these freebies, please leave feedback!! 

Tear Off Ads As Homework Or Carryover

An idea struck me earlier this week, so I played around with it to see if it would indeed work. We want our students to succeed in the therapy room, right? However, the progress that we are really aiming for is for them to succeed OUTSIDE the therapy room...that is, in the classroom, at home, or out in the community.

Homework and carryover are two things that I know I struggle with. The challenge can be getting students to return it...and in some cases, just to do it.

Have you ever seen those tear off ads? The ones with little strips of paper with a phone number or website that you can tear off to call/visit later on? Yep...they're getting "speechified!"

Cut out the whole rectangle, then cut horizontally so the words on the right are in individual strips. Your students leave with it and bring it back when the strips are gone, meaning they practiced saying the sounds (in words, phrases, or sentences) with multiple different people. It's based on the honor system, meaning you won't really know if Johnny just leaves the room and rips them off himself. BUT I'm hoping that because it's likely "new," it might be motivating to them!! 

I included 1 sheet (3 cards) for: initial /r/, er, or, ire, ar, air, and ar, plus a blank one so you can write in whatever targets you want. Click here to get yours!

Hope you enjoy this freebie!

Adapt Your Zingo Game + Freebie!

Do you have a Zingo game? There are several different versions, and this adaptation will work with all of them:

Disclaimer: Affiliate links are included for your convenience.

Step 1: Turn over the tiles and write numbers on them (1-72 or however many tiles you have). 

Step 2: Place the tiles back in the columns, but upside down so the numbers are facing up.

Step 3: Slide the slider as you normally would. 

Step 4: When the numbers pop out, find the corresponding numbers on your list and provide the stimuli for the students. 

Step 5: After answering, students can mark off the corresponding number on the bingo board, which is included in the freebie. 

Now for your freebie:

The freebie includes: 

-5 bingo boards (plus a blank one)

-Lists for categories, describing, and words to put in a sentence: includes 72 different stimuli items

Grab your freebie here!

Do you think you'll use this adaptation? 

ISIP Notes {Freebie}

 Have you been asked to write home notes to parents about what you did in speech? I have been asked in the past. It can be difficult to find the time to jot down even a quick note, especially if you have a group of kids. So I came up with a quick and easy way to do this. 

ISIP notes: ISIP stands for "In Speech I Practiced..." and its a checklist format, so you can quickly check off or add the skills you worked on. 

This is what the note look like and there are 4 per page (black and white for easy printing). 

Click here to grab a copy of yours - and don't forget feedback if you like this idea! 

5 Tips to Survive the Beginning of the School Year

Staff went back on Monday of this week. That means that this week has been full of meetings, professional development, schedule-making, paperwork, and definitely some stress. There is a lot of work that goes into the days leading up to greeting kids on the first day of school! I'm sharing some tips that will help you survive this time.

Tip #1: Talk to teachers! If you're returning to the school, it's a great way to reconnect and find out how their summers were. You can also use this time to find out which teachers have your students and   it gives you "face time" to start the year out on the right foot.

Tip #2: Ask about grade level schedules! Every school probably has a slightly different way of doing this, but you'll want to know when lunch/recess/specials are for each grade level to begin building your schedule.

Tip #3: Make planning easy for the first couple of weeks! Do some "getting to know you" activities or crafts and have fun welcoming your students back or meeting them if they're new to you. I have an easy (and inexpensive) craft called My Speech-O-Graphy, which will help you get to know your students AND remind them of their goals. Your students will be settling into new routines, so be mindful of that. There are tons of free activities on TpT - I just made a category of all my free items, so it's easier to find. Click here to be taken to those! Several would work for this time of year!

Tip #4: Think data! You'll want to think about gathering some baseline data. I have a free informal tool that will help you gather some preliminary data, but you'll want to check in on how students are doing on their IEP goals of course. 

Tip #5: Don't get attached to your schedule. As frustrating as it is, I find myself changing my schedule slightly throughout the year to accommodate new students, special events, personality differences, etc. It's a necessary evil of the job, but I try to just go with it!

Those are my tips for surviving back to school. How do YOU survive this crazy time of year?!

Back To School Roundup

Graphics: My Cute Graphics

August has arrived, which means only one thing. Back To School is just around the corner. Or already  here in some states. Here is my advice for this time of year:

1. Take a moment to have a good cry at the thought of returning to school.

2. Go to Target and look at all the pretty, new office supplies - if you're anything like me, you actually enjoy this part. 

3. Soak up those final sweet moments of summer vacation!

4. Stop here and I'll show you some awesome back to school finds!

Here are some of the activities from my store that will work for this time of year:

When's Your Birthday? Freebie: Students will use their listening and problem solving skills to figure out the birthdays of the 24 students in Room 365. 

Back To School SLP Checklist Freebie: Use this checklist at the beginning of the year to make sure you've got all your bases covered to start the year off on a good foot!

Language Sample Prompts: You can use these cards to get to know your students or start general conversations that can help you gather baseline data.

My Speech-O-Graphy: A brand new very easy craft activity that doubles as a back to school and a "get to know you activity." Only $1.00!!

Speech & Language Zoo: Chock full of activities to target 22 commonly targeted areas of speech and language. 120 pages!!

Here are some other activities that would work well for back to school from some fellow SLP bloggers:

Speech and Student Information Packet: by Major Speech Pathology by a Minor Girl (7th-12th grade)

Back To School Organized SLP Mega Unit by Bright Ideas SLP

DIY Magnetic Lids Game Freebie by GoldCountrySLP

SLP Black and White Monthly Planner by Denise Polley

Back To School Fun Pack by Mia McDaniel

SLP Office Signs by Queen's Speech

There are TONS of great things out there!!

Speech/Language Activities for Earth Day

Earth Day is April 22! While that seems like awhile away, we have spring break in the middle of April, so I will probably start doing some Earth Day activities next week. Some of the things I plan to use are:

1. Earth Day Extravaganza: This packet of activities targets categories, conversations, pronouns, irregular past tense verbs, listening for details, a plastic/paper sort, describing, and writing! 

2. Earth Day Articulation: This is FREE. Students can find words with their sound and color in the pages! 

3. DLTK has some free earth day crafts, worksheets, and games! 

4. A TpT search of free Earth Day speech activities yielded the following:

Printable Activities from Lauren LaCour

Earth Day Social Problem Solving from Super Power Speech

Earth Day Context Clues from The 'Peech Teacher

Earth Day Roll and Name from K Ratliff

Earth Day Sequencing from Maggie Lewis

Earth Day Recycling from Just Wright Speech

Earth Day Reinforcer from Simply Speech

I Love My Earth Multiple Meaning Activity from Emily Richardson

Recycle It Irregular Past Tense from The Speech Chicks

Plant A Seed Irregular Verbs from Just Speechie SLP

This should give you a great starting point for Earth Day activities! Enjoy!

LOVE-ly Speech & Language Activities

It's almost February, which means Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day! I've rounded up a few activities from the past year that should work nicely in your speech room for the month of February!

Groundhog Day is February 2nd. I usually have at least a few kids working on positional concepts and they frequently get tripped up by above/below and in front/behind. My answer? Use this FREE activity to target these concepts with a fun groundhog theme! Click on the picture below!

Another groundhog freebie that is brand new is a NPST activity if you're new to these and want to try it before you buy it. To grab this one, you just have to like my Facebook page! 

One of the newest products to hit my store is a NPST (No Print Speech Therapy) activity called Broken Hearted. It targets conjunctions, context clues, and synonyms. 

Work on multisyllabic words with Multisyllabic Hearts (2-5 syllables). No pictures are included on this one, but the cards feature a heart for each syllable to provide your students with visual cues.

Target social skills with this fun conversation heart themed activity. There are 4 colored hearts that each target a different skill: compliments, asking for help, greetings, and ending a conversation. It's played like "pin the tail on the donkey" so your students can be up and moving! 

Work on multiple meaning words with Multiple Meaning Mail. Each envelope has a word and requires 2 stamps to be mailed - the stamps need to be matched with the envelopes.

I'll most likely be adding a couple more activities, but if you follow my TpT store or Facebook page, you'll be the first to know!

A-HA Moment: Picture Frame = Barrier Game

Disclaimer: Affiliate links are included for your convenience.

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 Blizzard of Winter Activities

I can't believe December is here already! You know what that means! Pull out the gloves, hats, scarves, and hot chocolate. Oh, and lots of fun winter speech activities. If you need some help with that, never fear! I am putting all my recent and past winter activities here in one place for your convenience. 

PSSTTT: READ ALL THE WAY DOWN!

1. Complex Emotion Crackers: This activity will help your older students recognize more complex emotions. 

2. Healthy Voice Habits with Randy Reindeer (free): Help Randy Reindeer decide what's healthy and unhealthy for his voice. Best part? It's free.

3. Holiday Describing Fun (free): Your students will love describing objects in order to trim the tree and it's free!

4. Holly Jolly Language: This packet contains activities to work on plurals, pronouns, problem identification, categories, opposite concepts, and word finding. Plus, it's great for Christmas or Hanukkah!

5. Multisyllabic Reindeer (free): Target multisyllabic words with this cute reindeer freebie. Each card has the number of syllables shown with reindeer heads to give your kids a nice visual.

6. Polar Bear Pragmatics: This activity focuses on topic initiation, topic maintenance, appropriate responses, emotions, and tone of voice. The polar bears make it an engaging way to work on these skills.

7. Polar Bear Problem Solving: This activity focuses on problem identification, problem avoidance, and problem solving with those same adorable polar bears.

8. Prediction Presents: Students listen to clues to predict what's in each present. Categories include animals, school, sports, food, house, transportation, occupations, and clothing.

9. Stick It In A Hat Short Vowel Sort (free): work on sight words or help students who have difficult with short vowels or CVC words. 

10. Check It Twice: One of my newest products that targets inferences, reasoning skills, and ability to recall details. Your students have to help the elves figure out which gifts go to while child before they have to be delivered!

11. Snowman, Snowman, What Will You Wear? Mini book and speech/language activities: This is another of my newest products and I'm super excited about it. It includes a 12 page printable mini-book and a wealth of other activities, plus HW pages! 

There you have it! I'm sure I'll be making some more winter themed activities, but this should give you a great start when planning your activities! 

First one to comment with your email wins your choice of one of these products!