When you come across a fall themed book that engages each and every preschool speech and language student that you work with, you just have to share!  I found this book to use during my Fall theme with my preschool students.  It's called "Let it Fall."  It is a simple rhyming book without many words on each page, but it has beautiful illustrations that are super engaging!  I bought it for less than $3 on Scholastic.com ! This book follows a family of five and their dog on their adventures in the fall.  They rake leaves, go apple picking, go to a fall carnival, and go for a hike.  The book allows for lots of discussion because of all of the activities that the characters are engaged in.  Check out this page for some examples: On this page, I was able to help my language students expand their utterance length by stating what each person was doing.  The dad and mom are both raking the leaves.  The kids are jumping or laying in the leaves, and so is the dog. My ...

I bought a large bag of 200 trinkets from Dinky Doodads on Etsy  last year, but never really organized them like I wanted to.  I just couldn't make the decision of what to do with them.  Well, the inspiration came to me last week.  I was talking to an Early Childhood Special Education teacher at my school and she showed me a bag that she had filled with water beads and rubber fish that she was using for an aquatic animals unit.  It was so fun to squish around to find all of the fish.  This made me think of all of those little trinkets that I had sitting around, waiting for the perfect activity.  I just had to organize them into their sounds. I had a bottle of water beads from my days of making some sensory bins.  Today I made a huge batch of these little pearls of fun! After all of the trinkets were organized by sound, I put them into little Ziploc bags... pushed all of the air out against the edge of the table... and sealed each bag. I can't wai...

I have a rare blood type that only 3% of the population has.  I'm AB+.  The Red Cross calls me often to donate my "rare blood."  I put it on my to do list and schedule a time.  Sometimes I can end up making it to the appointment and actually donating.  I've had other times where I show up and there has been over an hour wait even with an appointment.  I've had to leave and not donate because my life is in a crazy balancing act right now and I had to leave to get to the next items on my list.  Then I feel guilty. My typical to do list in the afternoon includes hockey, soccer, or baseball practice, hockey, soccer, or baseball games, school activities for my boys, orthodontist or doctor appointments for my boys, homework, making dinner that has some sort of nutritional value, and then maybe picking up a bit before going to bed and starting all over.  Sometimes the dinner might not be that nutritional or my little people are late to an appointment...

Every year I update my Summer Speech and Language Calendars .  These are so easy to prep and send home with students for the summer for a little extra practice.  Parents appreciate the ease of use.  Simply put it on the refrigerator and practice an activity every day.  Each activity takes less that 5 minutes, but allows for the student to think about their sound every day. There are two sets of calendars included in this packet... Articulation These calendars come in black and white and color versions.  There is an activity on each day, and a small icon for students to color in after they have completed an activity. Language As with the articulation calendars, there is a different activity for each day.  Students color in an icon after they have finished the activity.  Language skills included in this packet: categorization, describing, storytelling, analogies, idioms, synonyms, antonyms, plural nouns, past tense verbs, auditory comprehension for sentences, auditory memory, cal...

Is your caseload bursting with articulation students like mine is?   It has been years since I have had this many articulation students, and frankly, I was getting a little sick of my activities that I had!  You can only play memory or Go Fish so many times, you know?  What my students don't get sick of is bingo dabbers and markers.  I swear, I can pull out a pack of markers or dabbers and I am a superhero!  Because of this, I decided to make a set of articulation pages for my students to color or dab.  St. Patrick's Day Articulation was born! This set of no-prep articulation pages includes the following sounds all in the initial position of words: B, Ch, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, L-Blends, M, N, P, R, R-Blends, S, S-Blends, Sh, T, Th, V, W, Y, and Z So, how does this work? Students can use their marker or dabber to color in the Leprechaun's gold after they say their word a number of times.  If you have your student say each word 5 times, you will get 70 product...

Winter is in full swing here in Michigan!  It has been cold and snowy and we are only a few weeks into winter. This has been my view on my way to work (not bad, right?): My kids all love to build snowmen when they play in the snow, and I've found a few ways to incorporate snowmen into my speech and language therapy too! 1) FLOOF! Over the winter break, I saw a new (to me) type of clay/sand called Floof.  This is such a great product!  I decided to purchase the snowman kit for my students to create and describe.  It has been so much fun!!! 2) Drawing A really easy way to incorporate snowmen is with a simple marker and piece of paper.  I start with the three snowballs drawn out and copied.  You can also have your students draw the snowballs and work on the concepts of small, medium, large, top, bottom,  and   middle.  Then I give directions such as "give the snowman a red scarf before you give the snowman a pink hat."  There are lots of directions that ...

I am always looking for activities that I can use to target both articulation and language goals, so when I came across this app, I had to try it out!  Little Stories for Speech, Language, and Literacy is an app by the great people over at Little bee Speech that is available for the iPad only at the iTunes store. How To Use This App Little stories are exactly that...little stories.  They are exactly 100-words long.  You can select each story based on: All pictures from Little Stories Pro Phonemic Targets : /l/, l blends, /r/, r blends, /s/, s blends, and th  Story Title : alphabetized selections  Themes : working as a team, having compassion for others, following instructions, etc. Reading Level : level A ages 6.5-7.5, level B ages 7-8.5, or level C ages 8-9.5 There are 82 different stories to choose from, so you will have plenty of stories to use with your students. Once you select the story, you will have the option to record your student reading the story.  Th...