Spring is here and the above photo was a picture of my whiteboard drawing as an icebreaker for my students. This drawing above initiated topics among my students such as: "My mother is growing tulips in her garden" or "Flowers need water and sun to grow." These conversations sound like some good language and some good speech sounds all in one.
I brought in artificial vegetables for my younger students to describe and they really enjoyed telling me all about the different types of vegetables. The artificial vegetables I got from Ikea in the children's section.
One of my favorite apps that a lot of my younger students have enjoyed is Dr. Panda's Veggie Garden. This app was very good to tie in all of the information that they have been learning in class about vegetables and fruit and how plants grow. Here is the link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dr.-pandas-veggie-garden/id585512923?mt=8Cost of this app: $1.99.There are 12 different fruits and vegetables that the students can grow and learn about in this app. It also provides some good vocabulary (i.e. plowing, seeding) and the students can put the fruits and vegetables in the correct category. To make it even more engaging, I chose one student to be the farmer.
First the elephant pulls up and is thinking off a fruit or a vegetable. The farmer (a student) can name what the elephant is thinking of in his mind. Below are some of the steps that the students had to take in order to make the blueberries grow.
Open the bag
Put the seeds in the pot
Use the watering can
Sunlight to help the blueberries grow
Keep the bugs away from eating your blueberries
Pick the blueberries and put them in the basket for the elephant
Put the blueberries on the back of the elephant's truck
Happy Friday Everyone! The thought for the day is above. If you have not noticed yet on the blog page to the far right, I post a "quote of the week" and a "student success tip of the week."
This post is about my favorite Ziplock bags. A lot of times, especially after you build your therapy closet of games, sometimes the boxes begin to fall apart. This leads us to the solution of ...Ziplock bags! Ziplock bags are great because they come in all different sizes and if the box is already falling apart you can cut the name of the game, place it in the ziplock bag, so that you can differentiate between multiple games. Also you can put the cards or playing pieces in smaller zip lock bags.
Ziplock bags are good for keeping activities together for each group that you see throughout the day. Examples of how I use ziplock bags are below.
How do you rescue your board games that are falling apart?
I have more than one school this year, so I have been on the road in my car travelling and providing speech and language Therapy to different students at different schools. This post is one of my latest additions to my therapy bin, which may become a tradition for the holidays.
"Bulletin Boards on the Go". In this post I added pictures of all of the different items that I included on the board. All of the items were purchased at the Dollar Store including the foam poster board.
Above are the foam shapes (8 in a pack) that I put on the board using tape. Included in the pack were fall items (i.e. pumpkins, leaves, acorns). I wrote the letters F-A-L-L for Fall on each foam shape.
Next, I added a few Fall stickers, the remaining stickers I put in a box and allowed the students to pick their fall sticker at the end of the session. There are 200 stickers in a pack.
Then, I added the Window Cling leaves to the board. There were a few of these in a pack as well.
Last I added the Gourds and pumpkin (three came in a pack) and the big tall scarecrow.
This bulletin board targets so many different goals.
So after adding all of
the additions to the Fall board. Here is the final product.....
All of the students really enjoyed viewing the board and talking about what they saw.
Now, they think I spend all my free time making fall boards too lol.
The Fall vocabulary list is on the back of the board.
I spent $6 and some change (for tax) to create this Fall Bulletin Board. Happy Thanksgiving!
What are some Fall activities that you have created?
The Vision Board is a great visual for anyone when setting goals. It is a great way to outline the goals that you are working towards in an organized manner and with pictures to support your goals. Below are some pictures of the vision board that I created with one of my older clients. This really helped for organizing, planning, problem solving and other skills. We created the outline and the categories (i.e. School and Career, Finances) and then it was filled up with goals and pictures. In the middle is a ladder with road signs, at the bottom rung of the ladder I have "Wrong Way," next is "Caution", in the middle is "No U-Turn." At the top of the ladder it says "Success Next Exit" and " "Welcome to Success." As the client gets closer to goal, the popsicle tick with his/her picture can be moved up the ladder towards success. There are many different ways that you can create your vision board. We used a big piece of poster board and had 4 different categories in each corner. If you create a vision board, I would love to see pictures and how you organized yours. Let me know how it turns out!
In Therapy we did a planting activity, all of my clients really enjoyed this activity. Some of the skills that were targeted during this activity included the following:
- Sequencing
- Synonyms
- Antonyms
- Increasing Vocabulary
- Pragmatic Skills
- Inferencing
- Following Directions
I like to incorporate various themes when planning activities for my sessions. We discussed the plant cycle, the parts of a plant, the tools that are needed to plant, vocabulary words that were related to planting, and a lot of other skills were targeted. This activity can be modified for different age groups, it was functional and fun! Below are some websites that had some activities to go with the planting theme: 
Potting Soil
Seeds
Pot, A Plastic Container to Pour Potting Soil Into, Plastic Trowel
Planting in Speech was so much Fun!
