New Year, New Website!!

This will be my last blog post here on BlogSpot.  It has been a great ride the past few months.  But I have decided to start a website that has been showcasing my blog posts.  If you are interested in what's going on in the Speech Chick's world that is the place to find me now!  You can order the TALKBOX from there, following along with therapy posts and find out more about Speech Chick!!  I hope everyone has had a great start to the new year.  I know I sure have!!  I have included the link so that you can find the website easier!

Speech Chick Therapy's new website!!!

Hope to see you all over at the new place!!
Melissa

Talking on a Tuesday: Gingerbread Edition

There's something about this tasty little guy that the kids love!  Besides the obvious answer (he is yummy), I am not sure how he does it.  If you read yesterday's blog, you know I chose to read "The Gingerbread Man" as the main book of the week.  A couple of my older kids heard "The Jalapeno Man" and our book buddy was able to still work.

Today's post is all about ARTICULATION!!!    Monday morning I was feeling pretty good!  I made a giant check list on Sunday and completed every task on it!  Several of those tasks were making sure I was prepped for Monday.  Pulled up to my first kid to realize I left the paint dauber AND the di at home...on my desk.  Time to improvise!!  We read our book.  Then I pulled out my phone and found a dice roller app (who knew they even had that??).  Instead of dot paints, we just colored the pictures.  Our first activity of the week was the newly loved "Roll and Say."  This one included characters from the story-gingerbread man, fox, old man and old woman. 

Our second session of the week included a take home game and an open ended game.  Both go well with the story.   First, we make the fox puppet while working on our words.  After we've made the puppet, we play the game a time or 2 in order for the kids to be able to play it at home.  I really like these kinds of games for my kiddos that are 1 session a week.  The concept is they "feed" the gingerbread cookies to the fox as they say their words.  When we are done, we place all the gingerbread cookies in the bag for storage.

The open ended game can be found in the book buddy along with the first articulation activity above.  Print a set of cards (1 page) for each child in your group.  If you see kids individually, like I do, print 2 sets.  Laminate all for durability and cut apart.  I store all my game pieces in manila envelopes.  The child produces his target word correctly 5x and then chooses a card from the envelope.  The one with the most gingerbread cookies is the winner!!  But watch out for the broken cookie and the fox!!!

Until next time, keep 'em talking!
Melissa

Monday Preview of Gingerbread Week!!

With Christmas right around the corner, it is a perfect time for a cute gingerbread theme.  I love the smell of gingerbread cookies in the oven around this time of the year!!  This week I have put together some fun activities for the kids to do  that celebrate all things gingerbread!

When I worked in the school system, I liked to read 3 different versions of the Gingerbread Man.  Then we could do the compare/contrast chart, talk about which the kids preferred (and chart the responses) and what we would do if we were the Gingerbread Man.  This would be the reason that I have several Gingerbread Man books.  I have to say I have 2 favorites.  I love "The Jalapeno Man" and "The Gingerbread Girl."  "The Jalapeno Man" is a must have for any SLP living in or from Texas!!  The figurative language in it is like no other!!!  Since I am now in the home setting,  I read it to my older kids (like around 2nd-3rd grade, depending on language skills).  "The Gingerbread Girl" is a great read for the girls.  Usually the boys don't want to hear it because it's about a girl.  But I love that it has a different ending.  It's not necessarily making the girl smarter.  I think it's more about learning from experiences (your own or someone else's) and making a different choice. 

"The 10 Gingerbread Men" is a brand new addition this year.  I found it before Thanksgiving and knew I had to have it for my little guys.

"The Gingerbread Man" Book Buddy can be found on the TpT store.  It has two drill type articulation sheets that will make the week fun.  Kids love those dot paints so feel free to use them with the "Roll and Say" drill.  There's also a couple of language activities; one of which is a new form.  It is called "Color by Skill" and addresses several skills at once as well as following directions.  I can't wait to try it out this week.  If you try it, let me know what you think about it!

I also added some cool playdough smush boards.  The little ones love them!!!  So grab a can of playdough and work on some expressive vocabulary skills.  The kiddos can name the objects and smush playdough on  them.  Or use it for receptive language; name a picture and have the child find it and smush playdough on it.  Either way, they'll have a great time!!

Have a great week!!
Until next time, keep 'em talking!
Melissa

It's Only Thursday...

Ever have one of those weeks when you have been super busy but then realize it's not Friday yet?  That's me today.  I've had a busy week.  Basketball Monday night...Online book party Tuesday night...Endless planning, website designing, "social media butterflying" (that's a word-not really but it could be) Wednesday night and(probably) tonight too... Then I realized I hadn't blogged about this week's activities!!!  What??!!  That's one of my favorite things to do!  So I will be giving you the condensed version of "Cookie Week."

Since I have mostly boys on my caseload, we only read "If You Give A Mouse  A Cookie."  No boys were going to ask for "Clara the Cookie Fairy." (boo, I like that book!)

We started out the week with the book and a drill reinforcement activity.  I needed to get the kiddos back in the swing of therapy after the holidays. You can find all of the activities in the blog here.  The second articulation activity we completed was a "Roll and Say" sheet.  The child rolled the die, found the matching one on the worksheet, and produced the word correctly that number of times.  Then the child colored/dot painted a picture in the row.  The kids really loved doing that!  I think we might be adding this one to our usual routine.  

 

As for language activities, we had a couple of school age coloring sheets.  The early childhood kids loved their stuff!!  Language for school age kids included working on irregular past tense verbs in sentences and categories.  We colored chocolate chips on a cookie as the client made up sentences using the irregular past tense verbs.  We also colored cookies when we could name 3-5 items that belonged in a given category.



The little guys had a field day with our activities.  Since some of my clients cannot follow the book of the week, I made a book that could go along with that is more simple (but could be used with it.)  You can find "Cookie, Cookie What Do You See?" on my TpT store as well as the "Mouse has..." board.  We practiced different language concepts using the Melissa and Doug Christmas cookie set and the Counting Cookie Jar.  The last activity we had was a simple category sort using food, animals and clothing.

 

Well, I started this post on Thursday.  It is now Friday at lunch time.  The blog struggle was real this week!!  Here's to a more organized and productive week next week!!

 

Melissa



Aww Man, It's Monday!

Don't we all think that after a long holiday weekend?!  I had tons of things I wanted to get done during my time off...got maybe half of it done!  I got a couple of home projects done but to be honest I didn't pick up my computer once!!  I had big plans to get all of my December activities done and posted to TpT, catch up all my notes and reports, and organize my office.   But then it got cold and the hubs lit a fire in the fireplace and the kids found movies to watch.  Needless to say none of my work stuff got checked off.  Funny how the warmth of a fireplace can zap the motivation right out of you!

 

This week our theme is cookies.  It's always a fun week.  When I worked in the clinic setting, we were able to bake cookies and decorate them.  Since I am a traveling therapist now, I don't get to do that.  We do play a game called "Cookin' Cookies" though.  It's a form of memory that the kids love!  You have to gather all your ingredients from the recipe card to make your cookies (or win the game!) 

Our book is "If You Give  A Mouse A Cookie" but I also like to use "The Best Mouse Cookie" and (for the girls) "Clara, the Cookie Fairy."  Our activities this week are centered around "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."  I even bring the little mouse from the book with me to finish up the week. 

We have dot sheets, coloring activities and even a little take home game for articulation.  As always there will be a more in-depth post about articulation and language activities later on in the week.

Today's post is short and sweet.  After all, it is the Monday after a break.

Until next time, keep 'em talking!
Melissa

Thanksgiving Dinner in Speech!

I have done this craft for the past couple of years.  Each year, I change it up a little but have never been completely happy with it...UNTIL THIS YEAR!!!!  You know how you do a craft with your clients (or your own kids) and you think, "That turned out cute but it would look better if I did..."?  That's how this craft is for me.  I really liked it but always wanted to do more.  I gathered my materials just as I do every year for this craft but it hit me on the way to the first client this morning.  MAKE THEM LIKE THE OLD LADY!!  Hello!!  After the first few kiddos, it has been a HUGE hit!!  The kids laugh and think they will get as big as the old lady in the story.  Here's what we did:

I gathered brown and white construction paper to make the turkey leg and dinner roll.  I used 4 cotton balls as mashed potatoes with a small yellow square as the butter.  I glued yellow pony beads as corn kernels and green pony beads as peas.  Of course, what's a good dinner roll without butter?  So I cut a small yellow square for butter on it too.  We sprinkle just a touch of poultry seasoning (which none of the kids think it smells good!) on the turkey leg.  Everything was glued onto a small paper plate.  The small paper plate was glued a 9x12 piece of orange construction paper.

To address articulation:  I still drilled the kiddos with their target words if they were at word level.  To get a food on their plate, they had to say their target 5x.  Some of my kids are at phrase/sentence level so this is where we used the sentence above the food.  The kids would say their sentence 3x correctly after we glued the food onto the plate.  The sentence was "I know a little boy/girl who swallowed (corn.)"  Only at the very end did we read the entire sentence with all the foods listed.

To address language:  We worked answering "what" questions such as "what do you want?" and using 3-4 word phrases to answer those questions like "I want corn please."  If you are working in a group setting, you could easily work on table manners at this time.  Kids would have to say "Please pass the (potatoes)."  You could even put the different "foods" in plastic serving dishes and prepare the table as if it were a real Thanksgiving dinner!!  (Man, times I wished I worked in a school setting!!)   Spatial concepts are easily addressed.  "Where do you want the corn?"  Answers could be "beside the turkey," or "between the peas and potatoes." 

Sorry I had to take a break from the regular "Wee One Wednesday" post.  This activity deserved it's own post!!!  It is so much fun!!  You can change up the foods too.  One year we used elbow noodles as macaroni.  You could cut strips of green paper to make a salad.  Get creative with it!!  Then come back and tell what you did!!

Until next time, keep 'em talking!!
Melissa

Talking on Tuesday-Artic is a Piece of Pie!

Before taking some time off, I always like to pack our sessions with the most reps we can get in.  Holidays get busy and with no sessions, sometimes my clients regress a little.   I made 2 dot sheets for this week.  The first goes with our story "I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie."  We read the story, talk about the food she has eaten, practice any words with our sounds and (if we are lucky) use them in phrases from the story.  Afterwards, I choose target words from either the story or an app (Little Bee Articulation) to complete the dot sheet with a paint dauber.  I though the kids would be tired of these by now.  Guess I was wrong!

For our second session of the week, I made another dot sheet with pies.

  We can drill our sounds and then complete a craft activity or play a game.  I am actually changing up our craft a little.  The last time I did this craft, it looked similar to the picture below.  There was turkey leg (complete with poultry seasoning), macaroni (elbow noodles), mashed potatoes with butter (cotton balls with yellow square) and pumpkin pie (complete with cinnamon and cotton ball whipped cream!).  The kids had a blast!!!  We could also work in some question asking with "May I have...?"  or table manners with "Please pass the..."

 

I will say doing a couple of days of this craft will make you hungry for Thanksgiving dinner!!

If you are interested in the dot sheets above, they are located in the TpT store.  You can click here to find it.

 

Until next time, keep 'em talking!

Melissa

The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie Preview

This is seriously my most favorite week in November!!  The kids love this book.  I have a ton of fun prepping the materials for the week.  It's just fun!  We have fun talking about all the Thanksgiving food that is we will be eating in the next week.  I love to hear from the kids about what they eat on Thanksgiving.  It's always an interesting conversation.  When I was a kid, I only ate the macaroni and cheese (and it had to be a certain kind!).  So you can say that I tend to relate with the kiddos who have mac and cheese with chicken nuggets!

To go with our book this week, we have a slew of activities such as the kids' favorite, the dot sheets!  I made two for the week but I am not sure if we will use both in therapy or if one will be given for homework.  I have a school age kiddo working on understanding the concepts of "before" and "after" so, I developed a worksheet to help teach "before."  Since I am trying to teach a new concept, I prefer to teach it one at a time.  A few other kiddos are working on using pronouns.  I developed an activity to work on using he/she in sentences.  I made 2 boards-an old woman and an old man.  The kids placed food cards on them and tell who "ate" the food.

For my little ones, I made a book to help teach basic food vocabulary for Thanksgiving.  There is also a matching playdough SMUSH mat to go along with the book.

 

If you are lucky enough for this to be your last week of therapy before the holiday next week, have fun!  If not, you can still have fun!:)

 

Until next time, keep 'em talking!

Melissa



Wee One Wednesday-Turkeys and Tots

Using turkeys this week has been fun with the little ones.  For starters, I am teaching a new vocabulary word-TURKEY.  Most young kids do not know what a turkey is or looks like.  Plus, it is super cute to hear a 2 year old try to say "Gobble, Gobble."  I wasn't really happy with my book for this week so I made one for the little guys.  It is similar to the "Brown Bear" format.  The kids picked up the rhythm of it immediately.  For some of my little guys with Autism, I saw their faces light up as if to say "Hey I know this one!"  I call it "Red Feather, Red Feather, What Do You See?"  It works on colors as well as answering "what" questions.  I kept it short so that it would keep their attention and not give too many words at once.  I also made a "SMUSH" board that goes with the book to work on colors.

The kids saw their favorite activity make a return this week-SMUSH boards.  I call them "SMUSH" boards because the little ones love to say "SMUSH!" as they smush playdough on the pictures.  This week my primary target is food!  I started with fruits last week.  Those appeared way too easy for several of my little friends so I added vegetables this week.  That should stump them!  You can also use these boards to work on goals such as describing qualities.  An example would be "What vegetable is red and grows on a vine?"  I added a simple category board as well to some of the sessions.  It was just recently added to the TpT store.  

Another favorite with the kids is the sensory bin.  I added seasonal vase filler balls (glittery orange and green), small fake apples, acorns and corn and a few feathers.  Then I added the plastic fruits and veggies we have been working on.  If you don't have the plastic ones, you could add laminated pictures of the foods you want to address.

The craft we do at the end of the week is similar to the articulation take home activity.  Except we glue the feathers onto the back of the bag.  Little ones must use words to make requests of the items they need.  Most of my little guys are seen at home.  They aren't in daycare so they don't crafts everyday.  They enjoy the actual process of making something.  The looks on their faces when we are done is enough for me.  They are so proud and SO EXCITED to show mom, grandma, dad or the babysitter!  Which of course ignites more expressive language!!!

Until next time, keep 'em talking!
Melissa

Monday Preview-Here Turkey Turkey!

I know when I pull out my turkey lesson plans, it's almost Thanksgiving!!  I find my "second wind" to get me through the next 2 busy weeks to a peaceful few days off with family.  Sleeping late and eating way too much are my motivational thoughts.

Since today is Monday, that means I preview the activities and books for the week.  The first book of the week is a good one.  The kids laugh every year at all the funny things the turkeys do.  I like it because of all the "-ing" verbs it uses!  Plus it's a countdown book since I like to reinforce counting and simple subtraction (which is about the only math I am good at!).  You can find it here.

I created a book  buddy to go with this book.  It comes with activities for articulation such as the kids' favorite dot sheet.  You can also use the turkey matching game or "Fat Turkeys Fooling on the Fence" game to drill articulation.  For language, there's a coloring activity to work on irregular past tense verbs and a spatial concept activity.  The games included are open ended so they could be used during language sessions as well.

 

As for my preschool kiddos, I am working on simple book for them that is similar to a "Brown Bear" book (Look for it on Wednesday's blog!!).  We will also use our popular playdough SMUSH boards to work on naming vegetables and fruits.  There's also new activity called "The Turkey Eats..." (Freebie Alert!!!)  that works on vocabulary as well as increasing the child's MLU.   The little ones will get to dig around in the Thanksgiving themed sensory box too.   

 

 

Until next time, keep 'em talking,

Melissa

Wee One Wednesday- Owls and Little Ones!

I work with a wide age range of kiddos.  With the wide age range, comes an even wider variety of kiddos.  I enjoy it that way.  Yes, it may take me longer to plan or gather activities.  But I like that each session I do is different and keeps me guessing!  Plus, it's nice to not do the same thing over and over all week.

I am dedicating Wednesdays to my younger kiddos.  These are kiddos are younger and benefit from a more play-based, interactive, sensory-seeking type of therapy.  Some of kiddos with Autism participate in these activities as well.  The book we are using this week is "That's Not My Owl.." (It was previewed in Monday's post.  Click here to buy it!)  As I've said before, the textures engage the kiddos.  They can actually feel what "rough" is!  The "touchy feely" textures keep the kiddos engaged and they follow along with the story.

After we read our book, we have a variety of activities that I bring in.  Since most of my littles are working naming/identifying basic objects, I chose foods as my concentration this month...it is the season to over eat right?!  I made "Playdough SMUSH!" boards like the one below.  Oh. My. GOODNESS!!  These are the best!  I cater them to the vocabulary I need to address.  This one is for -ing verbs  but I also made ones for clothing, forest animals, and fruits.  I like them because I can use 1 board but target different things.    I can work with labeling the fruits with one kiddo.  The next session might be identifying the fruits as I name them.  The 3rd session might be "Wh" questions like "what fruit can be red, green or yellow?" or categories (find all the red fruits or find all the fruits that grow on vines).  Possibilities are endless!  Plus the kids LOVE saying "SMUSH" as they smush a ball of playdough on the picture!

Another fun interactive activity is adapting the freebie on the TpT store.  Even though I have used it for articulation, it can be easily adapted as an interactive game for early language kids.  I used it to work on colors (each owl was colored a different color), 3 word phrases using "in/out" such "in the tree."  Turn a paper lunch sack into a tree with some green paper.  Give the child the direction of "Put the (orange)owl in the tree."  Then once they have followed the direction, ask the child "Where is the orange owl?"  They may need cueing to answer with "in the tree."

Hope everyone is enjoying Owl week as much as I am!!
Until next time,
Keep 'em talking,
Melissa