Winter Themed Big and Little Activity!

Hello Everyone!

Today's Freebie is a quick game that I have been using this winter with my pre-ker's! It targets the concepts "big" and "little". Here is a look at the freebie below!

I like to play the game memory with this, so it targets concepts same/different as well as big/little! My students are just beginning to use memory strategies when playing this game.

I also included a few paint dobber worksheets to practice other speech and language objectives! My kiddos love using paint dobbers and I have found that these worksheets really motivate them to complete tasks :)

If you want to download your free copy, please click HERE!

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!! Please follow me on Twitter and on my TeachersPayTeachers account for my most updated and FREE products!

Turkey Turkey What Do You See Freebie!

Hello Everybody!

Welcome back to Freeibe Friday! I am super excited for this weeks Freebie! It's based off of the classic Brown Bear Brown Bear book, but with a little holiday twist! It's called Turkey, Turkey What Do You See? Yep, you guessed it, it's Thanksgiving Day themed and my students love it!! It gets them (and me) excited for Thanksgiving and introduces a range of Thanksgiving vocabulary. I was surprised to learn that many of my students didn't know what a turkey even looked like. It's great for facilitating for great conversations about why we have Thanksgiving, what we eat on Thanksgiving, and who you share the special holiday with. Overall, this is a great and quick activity for targeting sequencing, wh-questions, and vocabulary! Here is short preview!

As you can see above, it shows both the Turkey and the next object that the Turkey sees! I like this format because it is simple and clear. 

I also included individual pictures so that you can target sequencing skills. Just print out and have the child sequence as or after you read this book!

Do you have any favorite Thanksgiving Day themed activities? Please leave a comment below and CLICK HERE for your freebie :)

Thanks for stopping by and come back next time for your Freebie Friday!

ASHA Do's and Don'ts!

Hey Guys!

Welcome to today's Tip Tuesday! I am so excited to share with you my first time ASHA experience in Chicago.  I really had no idea what to expect or how to prepare for this journey, so I thought I'd share with you some tips I learned along the way!

1.  Do plan ahead
Before I left for ASHA, I pre-planned my entire schedule, so that I could make sure to attend all the lectures I wanted and not scramble around the convention center getting lost. I used the Program Planner on the ASHA website. You can search for lectures and add them to your schedule! You can also download your schedule to your iPhone of iPad and it will automatically add events to your calendar. So helpful!!

2. Don't forget to share
Though I got to attend all my "must have" lectures, there were a few I regretted not attending (like the adult rehab lectures). The group of friends I went to ASHA with decided to split up for a few lectures. That way we could email each other notes and information from a missed lecture! Even though you won't get CEU's for this, it was still helpful for me to catch up on some adult dysphagia information that I desperately wanted!

3. Don't forget snacks
If you're like me and need to eat every few hours, make sure to bring snacks! The lines get overwhelmingly long during lunch hours and other breaks throughout the day. I made sure to pick up my morning coffee before the convention and brought a few granola bars. Also, allow yourself at least an hour lunch and dinner, because you will most likely stand in line for 30 minutes just to purchase a meal!

4. Don't be late 
Arrive to the lectures early! I would try and get to a lecture at least 20 minutes early to make sure I got a seat. Others who arrived late or even on time were asked to leave due to space shortage!

5. Do allow extra space 
Make room in your suitcase for extra goodies and freebies! I gathered a lot of free speech therapy items (my favorite being chewy tubes) and had a hard time packing. I actually had to check my bag for $25, because it was too full!!

6. Do bring your iPad
Make sure to bring an iPad or laptop computer. The lecturers do not provide handouts and you are expected to either print out the notes beforehand or view them on a portable device. I really liked using my iPad, because I could make notes right onto the lecture, email, and print them out! This was great when sharing lectures with my friends.

7. Don't forget your charges
If you do bring your iPad or iPhone, bring your charger too! You would be surprised how fast your battery runs out when your tweeting, emailing, texting, and writing notes!

8. Don't forget comfy clothes and shoes
I brought a mix of comfy clothes and dressy clothes for the conference. I ended up only wearing my comfy jeans and boots every day! Unless you're going to ASHA to network, get interviewed, or present, I would advise you to wear very comfortable clothes and shoes. You will be doing a lot of walking!

All in all, this was a fantastic experience and a fun way to get all of my CEU's! Chicago was amazing and I did get some time to enjoy the city, especially a lot of shopping on Michigan Avenue (oops)!

Did you go to ASHA? What are your tips? Leave a message below and come back for next week's Tip Tuesday!!

Thanksgiving Plurals Freebie

Hello all!

Thank goodness for Friday! I am so happy/excited/thankful for the long weekend :) I really need it as I am sure you do too!!

I have more updates to share with you! I have decided to do some per-diem work in a rehab facility very close to where I live. I decided to take on an extra position for many reasons, but mainly to keep up both child and adult areas of speech-language pathology. This will also give me work during holidays, school vacations, and summer! So, I do about 4-8 hours a week and going from playing with pre-k kids in the morning to treating older patients at night is very paradoxical. I have to remember to use my "grown up" voice and mannerisms with my adult patients. The school and rehab settings are truly very different worlds!! Eventually, as I get more comfortable in the rehab setting, I'd like to add a "Rehab Tab" to my blog to share materials I come across with you! Do you do any per diem work or have any great materials/websites/blogs? Let me know in the comment section!

All in all, I have been SUPER busy with two jobs and my new condo projects, and unfortunately have neglected posting my freebies here on my blog. However, I did want to let you know that I am very good about posting new activities on TeachersPayTeachers. If you don't see a product on my blog page, then click HERE to download my most recent products, as always, for FREE!

Today's Freebie Friday is entitled Thanksgiving Plurals. You guessed it, I have incorporated thanksgiving day themed items to target plurals for my kids! I have been meaning to make a plural activity for a while now. Here is a quick preview below!

Do you have a thanksgiving themed activity or week? Click HERE if you want your own copy of my Thanksgiving Plurals.

 If you download, please leave a comment below :) Have a great long weekend and come back next time!

Zoo Animals Articulation Pack Freebie!

Hello All,

Thanks for stopping in for your Freebie Friday! Hope your week went by quickly and smoothly. Today's Freebie is all about the zoo!! My students love animals, so I thought a zoo theme would be a great motivator to target vocabulary, articulation, and more. Let's jump right into the packet!

The first activity targets two and three syllable words that are both zoo-themed animals and other familiar objects. There are 24 cards in all. I added little circles under the picture for my kids to tap out the sounds. The tactile cue seems to really help them when producing complex words! You can print out two copies to play Go Fish, Memory, or matching games!

The second activity was designed to be paired with paint dobbers! I LOVE these things! I found some a my local teacher craft store and they are my new go-to activity.

Do you have a zoo themed activity? Want your own copy? Click HERE! If you download, please leave a comment below :)

Have a great week and come back next time!

Organization: Lesson Planning and Freebie!

Hi Everyone,

Welcome back to Tip Tuesday! This is going to be a quick post on how I like to write up my lesson plans for each student every week. I don't know about you, but all of my kids are scheduled back to back and this leaves me very little time to prep for the next session. So, I have developed an organized system that requires very little planning before my next speech group. I thought I'd share it with you!

First off, I develop my lesson plans based on the theme of the week. Every week has a different theme and this week it's Halloween! This is the layout I use and it really helps me keep my activities organized by articulation, language, and books!

Everyone morning before I start treatment, I organize my student's folders and child-specifc therapy items into piles in descending order (first folder is my first student). I organized articulation cards, bubbles, and a haunted house box filled with my wh-question cards onto my student's folder.

Below is a picture of what the folder look like with all the materials on top of their folder. That way, I don't even have to think about what materials to look for. I just grab their folders and go!

The last 2-5 minutes of each session, I like to keep track of my data and also plan for the student's next session. In the beginning of the school year, and when working with new kiddos, I am still discovering their strengths and weaknesses. So, I like to make a note of what to work on for the following session ASAP so that I don't forget the specifics.

Below is a picture of the worksheet I created to organize my lessons for the following session. I keep a sheet in all of my students folders. That way my next therapy session is already planned out and all I need to do is grab the materials!

How do you like to plan your lessons for therapy? Thanks for reading today's Tip Tuesday and please leave a comment below with your therapy planning ideas! Come back next Tuesday!!

Want your own lesson plan copy? Click HERE!

Happy Halloween!!

Halloween Wh-Questions!

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for the delayed Freebie Friday. I have the activity posted on my TeachersPayTeachers account, but haven't had the time to post it here! The reason being: I moved!!! I bought a condominium and it has been a crazy ride. I am doing some renovations on the place (new hardwood floors, painting, kitchen island) and it has eaten up all of my spare time! So forgive me for the late (and missed) blog posts. I promise to be better once my home projects are all finished.

Anyway, back to today's late Freebie Friday. I wanted to incorporate wh-questions to this week's activity, because it is a popular objective for my Pre-K kids! I have made two sets of Halloween themed picture cards to play memory, Go Fish, or any matching game. Below are some pictures of them in my room!

Here is an example of how I use them during the game memory!

Grab your free copy HERE!

If you download a copy, please leave a comment below! What are you working on with your little ones?

Have a great week and Happy Halloween!!

Halloween Pronoun Freebie!

Hello everyone!

I am so happy for Friday!! Even with the holiday on Monday, it's been a very long week over here in the pre-k! I am super excited for our next weeks theme: Halloween!! I had to make a cute Freebie Friday activity to share with you. I decided to create a pronoun pack, because so many of my students are working on the personal pronouns "he" and "she". Below are some sample pictures from the pack!

Here I taped the trick or treat his and hers bags to tissue boxes, so that when the kids picked out an item, they knew who it belonged to! 

Here the student used this visual to create the sentence "she has a spider in the bag". I am only targeting "he" and "she" right now, now his or hers. For more advanced students, you could cut out these words and have them sequence the sentence themselves using the correct pronoun!

 I realized after I made this visual, that sometimes the sentence can come out ungrammatical! For example, you wouldn't say "she has a candy in the bag" or "she has a bats in the bag". This is actually a great teaching moment. You could ask your student if that sentence sounds funny and see if they can identify accurate and inaccurate grammatical sentences. When it's incorrect, simply cover up "a" and you're all set!

Want your own copy? Click HERE!

If you download my pronoun freebie, please leave a comment below and follow me on Twitter for all your speechydays updates!

Thanks for stopping by and come back next Friday for more freebies!

DIY Articulation Organizer

Hey everybody!

Today's Tip Tuesday is all about organizing your beloved articulation cards! I, like many SLP's, love using articulation playing cards (like the Super Duper cards) in therapy, because they can be so versatile! Over the years, I have made many custom artic cards (early developing sounds, CVC cards, etc.) for different children to meet their specific needs. As my collection continued to grow, I quickly realized that I needed an organizing system in order to keep track of which cards I had and which I needed. So, I came up with this!!

Here is where I keep all of my "handmade" articulation cards. I color code them by position:

• Green- Initial
• Yellow- Medial
• Red- Final 
• Blue- Blends

Below is what you will need:

• An old Swiffer box or any box (I personally like the clear lid)
• Snack size baggies
• Color Coding Labels
• Sharpie
• Articulation Cards 

First, I print and laminate all of my articulation cards. A great site to get some free articulation cards is Adventures in Speech Pathology (one of my favorite Speech sites)! Next, I added the colored label on the right hand corner of the baggies and wrote the target phoneme on top. Below is an example of my /p/ cards in the initial, medial, and final positions. 

To the side of the box (I couldn't get the picture to rotate the correct way-ugh!) there are more baggies with the blue stickers. Those hold my s-blends, r-blends, and l-blends cards!

I hope that was a good explanation of how I like to organize my articulation cards! How do you organize your articulation or language cards? Leave your answer in the comment section!

Thanks for tuning in to today's Tip Tuesday and please come back next week :)

Old McDonald Language Companion Pack Freebie!

Happy Friday everyone!

We made it through another week and I'm definitely ready for the weekend! Where I live, the leaves just started changing colors, so I can't wait to get outside and do some fall activities!

Today's Freebie Friday is an Old McDonald Language Companion Pack. My theme for next week in my speech room is farm animals! This is one of my favorite themes, because there is so much I can target. The kids love learning about farm animals, singing Old McDonald, and playing with my barn. I thought the pictures in this companion pack could be used as visuals for singing songs and targeting different language objectives!

Above are the different ways you could use this game in therapy! You could target turn-taking, pronouns, following directions, prepositions, and much more!

Here is a boy and girl to target "he" and "she" in a pronoun activity!

Here are some of the featured animals on the farm!

Here are some of the objects featured on the farm to help increase vocabulary or work on following directions!

Do you have a farm themed unit for your speech room? Come and get your free copy HERE! If you download, please follow me on Twitter to get all your freebie and tip updates! Leave a comment below and have a great weekend :)

Yard Sale Haul!

Hello everyone,

Happy October! I hope you are all having a wonderful fall! Today's Tip Tuesday is all about garage and yard sales! Shopping for your classroom or therapy room can be very pricey! I don't have the extra cash to spend on brand new toys, storage containers, or rugs/furniture. I am given a very strict budget from my district, and I'd rather spend that on testing materials, apps, or other speech therapy specific tools. So, I get my toys from local yard sales and swap shops. I thought I'd share my finds with you, so that if you go, you'll know what to look for!

The first few items below I use for storage. Yard sales are a great place to pick up some containers, boxes, baskets, and other storage items for your therapy room. I am constantly looking for convenient ways to store and categorize my items.

Above are plastic containers that came with a lid and handle. I used these daily when I traveled between schools last year and I loved them! I could easily store lessons, folders, files, or toys in one of these bins and be out the door! Now that I am based in one school, I use them to store my student's folders and other manipulatives.

I found a few smaller baskets that were being sold for 50 cents and thought they would make a cute storage space for my wind-up toys and bubbles. I have 4-5 bottles of bubbles at a time, so keeping them all together is really useful!

I very rarely buy a board game brand new, because there is always such a variety at yard sales. I can get a classic game like Sorry or Candyland for just 75 cents. Normally those games are around 10 or more dollars. Yes, sometimes the pons or dice are missing, but I have so many from other games, I just improvise with that. The kids don't notice or care! 

I am a big collector of play people and characters. Sometimes, I can find sets, while other times, I can't. That's OK! My kids love digging through this box of goodies to pick out their favorite character. I literally use this box at least 2 times a day. Some of these characters, especially the Scooby Doo gang, are so motivating for my kiddos. They will do almost anything to earn a chance to play with them! I spent anywhere from 10-75 cents per character!

These both were fantastic good finds! I got the above box full of blocks for $2 and the farm for $1.50 and they are used almost every day in play therapy! 

I rarely splurge on books. I find so many at yard sales or swap shops for such a good deal (like 5 for $2).  Just make sure to check that no pages are missing!

This was my all-time favorite find! It's a street map rug with all different stops (fire station, police station, ice-cream store, and even a Home Depot!). I got it for $5. I love using this with the kids to target following directions, spatial concepts, and vocabulary! FYI, I did wash this rug and clean all toys before bringing them into my therapy room. It's always a good precaution.

So, that concludes my yard sale haul! I got every item for under $5.

"One mans trash is another man's treasure!" What treasures have you found at a yard sale? Leave your answer or comments below :)

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next week's Tip Tuesday!