Speech in a Snap! November {+ Giveaway!}

Hi!

Here is a peak at my latest Speech in a Snap! This November edition is packed full of no-prep black and white activities for Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving themes. There is a mix of activities for both language and articulation, so your whole caseload will be covered!

I can't believe November is only a month away. How does fall always sneak by so fast?

       

 

I love mini-books. It is hard to find books that can be squeezed into a 30 minute session and have time for follow-up activities! Mini-books solve all my problems. Well maybe not all of them... but there is coffee for every thing else! This Veteran's Day mini-book is great for vocabulary, comprehension, sequencing, and retelling. There is also a Veteran's Day follow-up comprehension page included for either therapy or homework!

       

  

I don't know about you... but here in Virginia, Veteran's day is a big deal. We will certainly be talking about it all week. So here are a few Veteran's Day themed language activities for describing and categories.

On to my favorite holiday... THANKSGIVING. I wish all holidays were this scrumptious. Students can work on comprehension (and following directions to cut and fold the book!) while learning about the First Thanksgiving with this mini-book. Students can work on vocabulary and describing when they draw the First Thanksgiving on the last page. See, I told you mini-books were awesome. You can target so many things!

I have also included two following directions pages. This one shown above words on one and two step directions. The other pages target prepositions.

     

 

There are language activities for WH questions, grammar, and sequencing!

There are also some activities to work on any target, including dot-art, reinforcer games, and a turkey craft!

You can check out Speech in a Snap! November at my store here! Enter below for a chance to win a copy. 

I hope you all are having a wonderful fall season! 

~Erin

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Speech and Language Fall Trees

Hi!

We are entering my absolute favorite season... FALL!!! Enter the sweaters, jeans, boots, perfect temperatures, beautiful colors, and pumpkin-flavored everything. We are getting in the fall spirit in my speech room this week! Our leaves are not turning quite yet... but maybe these cute fall tree crafts will encourage those leaves to show some color!

We used glue, scissors, some fall colored paper for leaves, and brown paper bags for the tree trunk and branches. We glued our leaves and branches onto some white paper. The best part about this craft? NO PREP. I already had these items lying around my speech room. 

The students worked on listening and following directions while we assembled the trees. After a little discussion about fall (and how awesome it is), the students traced their hands and arm onto the paper bags. After cutting them out, they glued them on their papers. Next, we ripped up our yellow, red, and orange paper and glued on our leaves! The kids had a blast getting to rip up paper! For my younger students, we talked about big leaves and little leaves and rough edges and smooth edges to sneak in some basic concepts and vocabulary.

The students wrote speech/language targets on their leaves. These two students were both working on /r/.  Some of my younger students are not quite ready for writing words yet, so we glued pictures of their targets on the tree with the leaves instead. At the end, the students took their trees home to practice for homework! 

These fall trees were fun to make and turned out so cute! What fall activities are you working on? 

~Erin

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100 Follower Freebie

Hi!

So this weekend my TPT store hit a big personal milestone! I now have over 100 followers! When I started creating products for my store this past summer, I wasn't sure how it was all going to go. Letting my ideas be open to the public was a little scary.  But so far, I am loving it! I love seeing my ideas come to life and sharing them with you. Your positive feedback has motivated me to keep going. As a thank you for your support, I have a freebie for you all.

Use this freebie to work on synonyms and answering and asking questions.

You can grab this freebie at my store here!

Thank you again for your support! This little journey I have been going down with TPT has been challenging, but so fun and rewarding. I hope to keep sharing my ideas with you all!

~Erin

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7 Wordless Picture Books for Speech Therapy

Hi!

The school year is back in full swing now and I am loving seeing my babies and doing what I love to do again! Since I am at a new school this year, I wanted to collect some solid baseline data and get a better idea of my students' language abilities. One way I get a good picture of how a student is doing with language skills is by using wordless picture books! What's a wordless picture book? It's just like it sounds - a picture book with no words! The reader can create his/her own story using the pictures. They are wonderful for using imagination and creativity and it really gives me insight into so many aspects of a student's language, including describing, naming, narrative language, comprehension, sentence complexity, vocabulary, identifying emotions, and predictions! They are also great during therapy! Here are seven of my favorites to pull off the shelf! {Affiliate links provided for your convenience}

1. Chalk

Chalk is about three children who go on quite the magical adventure after deciding to draw with chalk on a rainy day. The pictures in this book are so detailed! It is great for eliciting descriptive language. It is also one of those books where you never know what might happen next, so it lends well to making predictions.

2. Frog Goes to Dinner (A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog)

I LOVE the Frog books! While the pictures may not be as pretty as other books, the author does a great job at using humor and some mischief to tell great stories. Since there is always some trouble going on, this book (or any book in this series) is great for identifying problems and coming up with solutions. 

3. A Ball for Daisy

This book tells the story of a dog who loves his ball. He plays with his ball, sleeps with his ball, he lives with his ball. But then one day his ball pops! I like this book for therapy because the dog demonstrates a lot of actions, goes to several places, and experiences lots of emotions (especially after the loss of his ball!) I also find that my kids really enjoy books with animals.

4. The Chicken Thief

With some twists on an old fairy tale, this wordless book is about a fox who steals a chicken. The chicken's friends chase after them and they all go through some troubles as they run through the woods. The book has lots of twists and has a surprising but cute ending. This book is great for sequencing, identifying characters, and predicting. The ending also lends itself well to talking about morals.

5. Pancakes for Breakfast  

This is an oldie but a goodie. Plus - I love the illustrations for all of Tomie DePaola's books! This story is about a little old lady who tries to make pancakes for breakfast but runs into some problems while gathering her ingredients and making her breakfast! This book always gets a laugh out of my kids. I like it for working on sequencing, identifying problems and solutions, and talking about how sometimes you need to keep working through problems to get what you want!

6. Where's Walrus?

This is a funny little story perfect for younger students about a Walrus who decides he is bored at the zoo and decides to escape! He visits all around town and meets lots of people. This pictures are simplistic in this book, which makes it ideal for pre-school students. Where's Walrus hits on a number of targets, including identifying emotions, identifying people and places in the community, and is also good for WH questions, such as "Where is Walrus?" and "Who is Walrus with?".

7. Good Night, Gorilla

Goodnight Gorilla is a classic wordless picture book for the little ones. While the zoo keeper locks up the cages and assumes the animals are going to bed for the night, the animals have other plans! I like using this book with my pre-school population to target action verbs (especially the present progressive tense). It also is great for simple predictions and WH questions.

Do you use wordless picture books during assessments or therapy? What are some of your favorites?

~Erin

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Getting Everything Together for The New School Year!

Hi!

So my first week of school is officially done! Whew! We started school really late this year and I have to admit - adjusting back to setting an alarm, having to wear real clothes for the WHOLE day, and trying to sound intelligible by 8 in the morning has been a wee bit difficult for me this week. I mostly coped with lots of ice cream and coffee. The man was nice and helped extra with feeding me things besides cereal (which is all I had the energy to make at the end of the day) and extra target runs for my somehow never ending list of things I have forgotten. Target should probably just offer free delivery to schools during back to school week. It would make life so much easier.

Anyways.... my room is coming together! I am very excited because I have - *drumroll* - TWO WINDOWS. Heaven help me if I have to change schools anytime soon. They will probably have to drag me out kicking and screaming because I know I will never get a room with such lovely windows ever again.

LOOK AT ALL THOSE GLORIOUS RAYS OF VITAMIN D! Also, have I mentioned I don't really have walls? Just bulletin boards. Super. Giant. Bulletin boards. This is just one of three.

MORE WINDOWS! Do you see my plan here? No matter where I am sitting I will be soaking up that sweet sunshine. My first speech room literally said "storage" on the outside - this is such a nice  upgrade. This is my desk and my preschool table. Aren't the little chairs so cute next to that well placed hand sanitizer?

The SLP who was here before me must have had a super awesome budget back in the day, because she left so many amazing speech materials! I am very lucky. 

I also have a smart board this year! And a cute dollhouse with lots of little objects and people for my little ones to play with :) My principal even ordered me a new green carpet (to match my blue and green theme I am attempting) for them to play on. She also bought me an EET kit so she is pretty much my new BFF.  It is great to have an administrator who understands my role and appreciates what SLPs do!

This is my homework and student folder area... It is still under construction. They obviously did not have copy limits back in the day because there were SO MANY BOXES full of homework sheets! I am trying to scale it down a bit. Again with the giant bulletin boards... Do you know how hard it is to try to put paper up on these? I hope my kids like this year's color theme because I will probably never take them down.

One last chance for my students working on articulation to get some practice in before leaving! Thanks Natalie Snyders :)

This week has been full of cleaning, organizing, bulletin-boarding, kindergarten screening, and trying to figure out middle school at my other school! I have also been getting together student homework folders to send home the first day. Along with an introduction letter and communication log, I will also be including these Parent Handouts for Articulation in the folders this year.

These handouts are great for helping parents get involved in practicing with their children. So often I have parents say that they just don't really know how to help when I send homework sheets home. So I decided to create these handouts to help explain to parents how to make each sound and different tips and tricks and ways to practice. They are in black and white for quick printing, as well as color. 

You can checkout these handouts at my store here! There are handouts available for /k, g, f, v, sh, ch, j, s, z, l, th, and r/. I think my parents are really going to like them!

How has the beginning of your school year been going? Are you feeling back in the swing of things yet? I wish you happy speeching as your year gets started!

~Erin

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