You may have noticed that I have not blogged for some time. This Winter season has been full of family trips, family illness, and updated materials! Since it has been a crazy time for my family, it has limited my therapy planning time. Work is one place that I do not slack though (unlike my home that looks like a tornado hit it!) since I know I have little one’s and families depending on me to give them my best and build communication. When time is in a pinch, I pull out the following:
SEASONAL STORY BOOKS– I’ve shared this in the past and I will share again! You can hit just about any target goal with a story book! I have used them to listen for, dictate while drilling, and then sending home those same articulation lists. I love doing this as students can practice auditory listening, fine motor control with writing, and then when they go home they can also share with their parents what the story was about! I have also used story books to work on wh- questions, pronouns, prepositions, sequencing, yes/no questions, labeling, categories, and functions. Story books are perfect since they already contain the built in picture cues!
NO PREP SPEECH & LANGUAGE MATERIALS– I have made these No Prep packs that work on the following speech sounds in all word positions and on mixed pages: k, g, f, v, s, l, ch, sh, j, th, and r. They also include rl words, s-blends, l-blends, and r-blends! The following language skills are also addressed: action, pronouns, categories, antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, and functions. The BIG BUNDLE includes all seasons and the main holidays.
- PLAY MUSICAL DRILL! Post or hide drill cards around the room and turn on the music. All the kids in the group dance around the room and look for their speech sound cards. When they find one they dance in place until the music stops. If a student has not found a card, they must sit back down at the table but you provide them their drill word. For the students that found one of their sounds, they practice their drill word while standing up, and hand you their card. Then you turn the music back on! The last kiddo left dancing… wins!
- HOPSCOTCH ARTICULATION/LANGUAGE. You could get fancy and get a hopscotch rug but why spend that money? I simply put pieces of colored paper on the ground in a hopscotch pattern and place the articulation or language cards down on the colored paper. Students take turns tossing a penny to the square and then hop their way to pick it up and finish the pattern to the end. No matter if they make it all the way to the end or not without falling, they practice their word or skill. However, they can only keep the card if they made it through without falling. Be sure to CLEAR THE AREA of any thing that the students could fall into and hurt themselves (chairs, tables, desk, keep away from filing cabinets and bookshelves). If you do not have enough room to do this in your speech room, I have taken speech outside when it wasn’t too cold or windy, and have used it in the gym/cafeteria.
Grab this J sound FREEBIE! |
PLAY DOUGH and DAUBER pages for ARTICULATION, APRAXIA, CONVERSATIONAL EXCHANGE, FLUENCY, LANGUAGE, and PHONOLOGY– My students love when I pull out my Mash & Mark sets. I made a whole set of resources to address a variety of needs with colorful playdough mats and low ink black and white dauber pages. Just pull out the play dough, crayons, or daubers and enjoy! Planning speech has never been so simple for me! I have found that having these resources always available it makes quick changes possible (a new student transfers to my caseload, little are too wiggly and need a back up plan, need to change up activity due to lack of progress with planned speech activity, etc..).