To start, select cards that have interesting pictures on the front and cut each card along the fold to separate the picture from the rest of the card.

Here are some therapy activities you can do with the cards:

• Hang up a few different pictures where all of the students can see them.  Have each student secretly choose one of the pictures and then write five words to describe it.  Read the descriptive words aloud and see if the other students can guess which picture it describes.

• Put out a few pictures and have the students each choose one to write a story about.  Remind them to use descriptive words and to include characters, a setting, and a plot.  Let the students share their stories with the group.

• Have the students find part of a picture that has their sound, cut it out, and glue it on a piece of paper.  They can then write and/or say at least one sentence that includes the word.  Older students can write a tongue-twister using the word.

• Let the students each cut out a part of a picture and glue it on a piece of paper.  Then have them draw a scene around the picture that includes other pictures with their target sounds.

• Cut a few cards apart like puzzles and write words that go together on the back of each one (e.g., words that begin with the /s/ sound on the pieces of one card, words that begin with the /r/ sound on another).  Mix up the pieces.  Once students have sorted the pieces into groups that go together, they can turn the pieces over and put the cards’ pictures together.

Please comment with any other ideas you have for reusing holiday cards.

Happy New Year!

What you need:

• two sets of cards (identical or pairs, such as antonyms)
• pocket chart (optional)

Set up:

1. Separate the pairs of cards into two stacks.
2. Place one set of the cards in the pocket chart in rows and columns so that the picture or word is hidden.
3. Deal out four cards face up in front of each player (their cards).

How to play:

1. When it’s a player’s turn, he goes up to the pocket chart, turns over a card, and says a sentence using the word.
2. If the revealed card matches one of his cards,  he takes it off of the chart and matches it with the card at his seat.  Deal a new card face up in front of him.  He now gets to go back to the pocket chart to turn over another card.
3. If the revealed card does not match one of his cards, he sits back down and the next player gets a turn.
4. When you run out of extra cards to deal out, play continues until a player has matched all of his cards.
5. Once a player has matched all of his cards, play stops and the player with the most matches wins.

This version is different because the players can only make a match with the cards that are in front of them.  (I love seeing a student’s eyes light up when another student reveals one of their cards.)  I made it harder for my middle school students by eliminating some of the words they could use in their sentences (e.g., I, people, stuff) and requiring a minimum of five words per sentence.

Note:  I used masculine pronouns to make the explanation of game play simpler.  I do realize that most caseloads include males and females, but putting “he/she” and “his/her” everywhere complicated the sentences.

Please share how you have used this idea in your therapy sessions in the comments section.

Getting Started

First the students trace their hands on pieces of paper.  Next, they draw the legs and feet at the bottom and add a beak and wattle to the thumb.  You can either have them draw an eye or glue a googly eye on the thumb.  Depending on which goals you are targeting, you may want the students to make multiple turkeys, or maybe even a flock of turkeys!

Making it Work

Now that your students have made their turkeys, what can you target?  Just about anything!  Try out some of these ideas or come up with your own.

Have your students…

• write a Thanksgiving word that contains their target sound on each finger.  They can practice the word on the first finger one time, the word on the second finger twice, etc.  This can also serve as a take home practice page.
• write a main word (e.g., turkey) on the palm and descriptive words or a sentence on each finger (e.g., It’s a bird, It has a wattle, etc.).
• write what they are thankful for on each finger.
• follow directions for coloring their turkey (e.g., Put three orange stripes on the first finger.)

As a free bonus, here is a list of Thanksgiving words for you to use for discussing vocabulary or as stimulus words for articulation.  Keep it handy when you’re trying to think of seasonal words to use in your sessions.

Why letters?

Just like with narrative and persuasive writing tasks, you can work on good word choice, capitalization, punctuation, sentence variety, and details when writing letters to people.  Letter writing also has these advantages…

• Your students can get a reply, which they’ll love!
• Letters can be taken from a plan to a finished product quickly.
• You can work on appropriateness of topics and the format of a letter.

Who should they write to?

• Family and Friends – Keep family members and friends in the know.  Students can write about family outings, school topics, or activities.
• Veterans – Let our veterans know that their sacrifices are appreciated.  Help your students write letters to veterans thanking them for their service to our country.  You can then deliver or mail them to a local veteran’s group.
• Troops - Write letters and send them to our troops.  There are great organizations such as A Million Thanks that mail the letters to our troops.  Their website has instructions and guidelines, a list of drop-off locations,  and an address to send the letters to if there isn’t a drop-off location near you.
• Santa – Make sure your students’ letters to Santa (or the elves and reindeer) are in tip top shape by working on them during therapy sessions.  Remind the students to use complete sentences and descriptive words to tell Santa what they’d like this year.  It’s always fun reading what the students have to say to the jolly old elf!

Please share any other suggestions you have with us by leaving a comment.

Getting Started
Our sessions usually start with someone asking one of these questions…”Are they real?” or “What are those?”  Yes, they are real, and they are all gourds.  Once on this path, we discuss that pumpkins are gourds.  I have them use their knowledge about pumpkins to figure out how gourds grow (on vines), whether they are a fruit or vegetable (fruit), and their characteristic parts (a hard rind, seeds, and pulp).

Describing, Comparing, and Contrasting
I then focus on describing and/or comparing and contrasting.  To do this, the students describe one gourd with as many adjectives as possible while I write down their responses.  I provide reminders for them to include words that describe its shape, size, color, texture, etc.  We do this again with a different gourd.  To take this to the next level, comparing and contrasting, we look at both lists and find which adjectives fit both gourds and fill those in the center area of a Venn diagram.  The other adjectives go in the outside areas of the Venn diagram.  If time allows, I pick different gourds and have the students fill in a diagram on their own.

“Guessing Gourds” Game
“Guessing Gourds” is another fun describing activity you can do.  Start by assigning numbers to the gourds.  Then have a student describe one of the gourds, while the other students try to guess which gourd it is.

More Fall Ideas and Materials
I hope you find these ideas helpful.  There are many other fall ideas and materials on our website.  To see them all, open the search menu on the home page and type in “fall” as the keyword.  Members can also access and print a Venn diagram from here.

Please share your comments with all of us.  We’d love to hear your fall ideas or feedback on these activities.

The idea is simple…make a connection between ants and opposite words. There are a number of ways to do this depending on the ages of the students you work with, how crafty you want to be, and how much time you want to devote.

Here are some examples of things you can do:

• Print out the ants printable and write one word of an antonym pair on each ant and have the students match up the ants that go together. You can then hang the pairs of ants around the room or on a bulletin board!
• Help the students make ants out of egg cartons (like in the picture) and attach pairs of antonyms.
• Make ants out of black or red paper, write antonym words on the two body sections, and cut the sections apart. Have the students match up the body parts that go together and attach them using tape, glue, or brads.

Do you have ideas for antonyms? Share them with others in the comments section.

Free printable “ant”onym page

Have fun!
Becky

Pick up a box of Valentine’s cards! They can be turned into customized therapy materials in just a matter of minutes! And did I mention how inexpensive they are? I found boxes of cards with licensed characters on them at the dollar store!

Here are some ideas of what you can do with them…

• Make matching sets to work on “same” and “different”.

• Create stimulus cards to use in your sessions. You can write words on them for articulation practice or language activities (e.g., antonyms or multiple meaning words). Fold them in half and let the students pick them out of a bag, bowl, or small box.

• Add numbers to the cards to tell the students how many responses to give, spaces they move, or points they earn.  More specific instructions for this activity can be found at the last link below.

Some other Valentine’s Day ideas I’ve posted can be found through these links…

Valentine’s Day Activities for Speech Therapy

Here are Some “Sweet” Valentine’s Day Therapy Materials

Quick and Easy Valentine’s Therapy Activity

If you have a Valentine’s Day activity to share with us, please comment below. We’d all “love” to hear about it!

Becky Wanca

How?
Once you’ve scheduled your groups and identified your students’ goals, decide on a “building block” activity that you will work on each session.  This activity shouldn’t take much time, but will make a difference over the course of a year.  During each session, review the word, idiom, or skill that was introduced during the last session and then move on to the new one.

Examples of “building block” activities:
Vocabulary
Idioms:  Introduce one or two new idioms
Word meanings:  Introduce a couple of vocabulary words and their meanings
Affixes:  Introduce some prefixes, suffixes, or root words (e.g., tri=3, pre=before)

Grammar
Parts of speech:  Introduce and practice generating examples of nouns, prepositions, etc.
Fix-ups: Write sentences with errors on the board and have the students fix them and explain their corrections.

Speech
Goals:  Have students tell which goal(s) they are working on and describe strategies that help them.
Word of the week:  Give students a word or phrase to focus on producing correctly for the week.
For more information about starting off the school year right, check out a post from last year at
http://www.speechtherapyideas.com/2009/08/20/start-out-right/

Add a comment and tell us how you start out your school year or what activities you do consistently to build up skills.  We’d love to hear from you!

Becky Wanca

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

This craft reuses egg cartons, which makes it a great Earth Day activity. I love that it is perfect for spring, easy for little hands, and adaptable to go along with Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar book. It also makes sessions fun!

I did this craft with my younger students after I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and had them answer questions about the story. There are so many different skills you can target with this wonderful book, such as counting, sequencing, vocabulary building, question answering, and specific sound practice.

You can print a copy of my questions now and look for more related ideas and printables in the Picnic Basic Set.

Here are the directions for the egg carton caterpillar:

Materials:

• egg carton (cut into a 3-cup strip)
• pipe cleaner (cut in half)
• scissors
• marker
• glue
• googly eyes

Steps:

1. Gather materials.
2. Have the child draw a smile and nose, if desired, on one end of the egg carton.
3. Poke small holes where the antennae will be. From the bottom of the caterpillar, have the child put one end of the pipe cleaner in one hole and then the other end through the other hole. Curl the ends and bend them as desired.
4. Glue small googly eyes above the smile.

Here are the printable downloads for this post:

Pictures and directions for making an egg carton caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar questions

-Becky Wanca

Materials:

• 2 paper plates per child
• black crayons for coloring the pot
• scissors tape or stapler
• paper coins – Here is a page of coins for you to print out or you can use a circle paper punch. You can use colored paper or color it yellow or gold yourself.

Preparation:

• Gather the materials.
• Cut a part off the top side of one paper plate to make it resemble an open pot.
• Cut out the coins and decide what the targets are going to be (i.e., sounds, antonyms, etc.).
• Attach the plates together if you want to have this done ahead of time.

Activity:

1. Have the child color the back of the cut plate and the top part of the other plate black. If working with a group, the children can color while waiting for their turns.
2. Tape or staple the plates together so that they create a pocket.
3. Spread the coins out on the table or put them in a bag or bowl for the children to pick from.
4. Have the child pick a coin, practice the targeted activity, and then put it in his pot.
5. If there is time, review the stimuli in the child’s pot.

Again, for a printable page of coins to use in this activity, click here.