Have a Heart

9 Feb

valentine flowerProgress reports are in and it is time to get back to planning for therapy.  February is a short month so it goes by quickly.  I find I still need to keep things simple for my younger folk.  We dressed the bulletin board up with heart animals.  This activity was more open-ended then the ones I have done in the past.  I used a die cut to cut a variety of hearts in different sizes and colors. They used sequins for the eyes.  Students were told  to put the hearts together to form an animal.  I showed them a few pictures from Pinterest and then they were on their own.  It was hard for them to get started.  When they found they could try pieces out 1st before gluing they got a little more adventurous.  It was a good opportunity to practice social skills to ask for tools and materials. We have worked a lot on sequencing and this activity required them to think about the order of gluing.   I also listened to my articulation  students to see how they were progressing with their spontaneous speech. Quite a few of my students decided to take them home to give for Valentine’s Day.

They came up with a good variety of animals.

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Free Spinners for Game Adaptations

4 Dec

You may have noticed that I like to use spinners to expand the therapy value of some of my games and teach concept vocabulary.  I have some of them as part of my downloads in the vocabulary section.  The spinners in my previous downloads are  black and white and  not very colorful.  I decided to update them with pictures and color to make them more friendly for my non-readers. You can access them on TPT for FREE.  Just click the button.TPT button

 

The spinners are made from the clear plastic lids you find on products  such as  whipped cream  or oatmeal containers.  A pony  bead, paper fastener and spinner from heavy cardboard or plastic are added. The lids are clear so that the paper form  can be placed underneath and still be seen.  The paper can be replaced from one activity to the next and the same spinner stays intact. Look below to see my showcase of spinners and the games I use with them.

Left and Right Spinner.

This spinner  is used when playing Blockhead or some other block stacking game. It  targets the concepts of left and right.  The spinner has the directions of Left or Right  with a handprint for cuing. Students take turns spinning the spinner and use the hand that is indicated to pick up a block and stack to make a tower.  Point out to the students that when their hands are flattened on the table their left hand will form an L shape with the pointer and thumb. This is another cue they can use to distinguish their left hand from their right hand. I have used this as a table or center activity with table groups of 6 students in a Kindergarten class.

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 Size and Shape Spinner:

You need bean bags or soft balls that can be tossed, plastic pails and boxes of various sizes and shapes, and  spinners  with the vocabulary words printed on it.   Have the students  make a big circle with the containers placed in the center.  Instruct the children on how to toss the ball or bean bag safely so no one gets injured.

The spinners travel around the circle.  Students  spin the spinner and toss the bean bag or ball as required  trying to get the bean bag in the appropriate container that matches the word on the spinner.

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For the Amount Spinner, I use  a game I made up called “Don’t Fall Through the Ice ”       IMG326

amount spinner

Use the amount spinner, one 2 lb plastic coffee container.  A rubber band that fits around the mouth of the container, tissue paper, marbles, cup to place marbles in water, spinner with vocabulary words.  Instructions:  Put one sheet of tissue paper across the opening of the  2 lb container.  Fasten it down by stretching the rubber band around the top of the opening. You may need an extra set of hands to accomplish this.   It should look like a drum.  Put marbles in the cup and fill with water.  Children take turns spinning the spinner and taking the number of wet marbles indicated.

The students place the marbles on top of the tissue paper top.  The wet marbles will weaken the tissue paper and eventually fall through.  The wetter the marbles the faster they will fall th rough.  If you are using this activity with table groups they can count the marbles and compare who has the most or least marbles.

Don’t Spill the Beans is an other game that can be used with the spinner.


 

The conversation spinner can be used with any board game that uses a typical number spinner.  It works well with games such as Snakes and Slides or Chutes and Ladders. Students try to follow the prompts on the spinner and give an example.conversation spinner

How do we get students to follow directions?

7 Nov

 

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Every year there seems to be a  speech area that rises above all  the others.  This year I am hearing a lot about students who do not follow directions.  There can actually be a lot of reasons for this to include being distracted by the environment,  sensory issues around space and movement, not understanding the directions, not understanding the rules of turn taking (speaking vs listening) and difficulty with short term memory.  Of course some students have all of these things in different degrees working together to get them off track.  If one student is having difficulty they  can disrupt the learning environment for any of the other students causing a chain reaction.  It is no wonder that our teachers find this a concern.

Classroom management and warm up activities can go a long way in  helping students get prepared to focus or get them back on track.  I have included some  resources you may find useful for therapy or to pass on to your teachers.  Some of them are our tried an true therapy games, but maybe you haven’t thought of them in the framework of building memory or following directions.

This web site has good suggestions for teachers on classroom management to enhance the ability of students to follow directions.   http://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/2013/05/how-to-get-students-to-follow-directions.html

Body Jive   is a CD that has warm up activities for movement and following directions. I have used it as a warm up activity before social groups.   The site has some activity/song previews so you can get an idea of what they sound like.ARCD96

“Simon Says” and  “The Previous Command” are two traditional children’s games that do not need special materials and can be used at a moments notice.

[wpdm_file id=18]      Previous command instructions

There  are the traditional card games such as “Go Fish  and “Memory Game” that can build a number of skills depending what is on the cards.  Some children need direct instruction on turn taking and paying attention to the cards drawn prior to their turn.  They will choose or flip cards indiscriminately  and not realize they need to remember cards.

Barrier games help build directional vocabulary and concepts.  Not understanding the prepositions in directions often add to the confusion of our language delayed students.  Be aware that some students have difficulty with words such as before, after, while, any, neither, either, during, not and none.  Try to give directions in several ways so the students get the meanings. For example; “Take any color means you take only one”

Goofy Follows Directions;  part of an educational film made by Disney. It illustrates  the importance of following directions.

 

In honor of Thanksgiving, I put The Never Ever Dinner Plate activity on sale on TPT.  I use this activity  this time of year because it fits in the themes of “Food” and “Dinner”.  It also teaches the concept of “Not”.  A direction with “not” can sometimes trigger the student to do the opposite of what you want because they don’t hear or understand the “Not” part.

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Adaptive Don’t Break the Ice

10 Oct

 

 

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During my career there have been certain students who have made a lasting  impression on me and aided in my growth as a speech language pathologist. It seemed that fate  crossed our paths so that we could learn from each other.  I am thinking in particular of a  student who I met in her Kindergarten year.  Her disability prevented her from speaking or using her arms and legs effectively although eventually she learned how to use her head to control a motorized wheel chair and a laser to activate an Alpha Talker and then a Delta Talker. This is when the field of  augmentation communication was beginning to blossom with more advanced electronic devices.  This child did not have the outward appearance of much ability other than a beautiful smile.  However with her devices her true personality could shine.

I will never forget the time I worked  with her at her home during extended summer services. She would be going into first grade when school resumed.  Her mother reported she had something to tell me.  She proceeded to tell me she had seen the movie Pocahontas.   That doesn’t seem that unusual except she used her Delta Talker  to do it and she had programmed the name Pocahontas into it  herself.  Those of you who have worked with min speak realize this involves not only getting into the programming mode but also selecting a symbol sequence to represent the name.  She did all of this using a laser attached to a head band.    She had learned the programming  by watching me during other sessions.  I learned not to underestimate her abilities when motivated.

She would be in her twenties now.   I lost track of her after her elementary years but I think of her often.  She reminds me that our first impressions of a student’s capabilities are not always correct.

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How does this get us to Don’t Break the Ice  you ask?   Well it was difficult for her to play with her peers and have  normal interactions.  I was always searching for games I could adapt.  Don’t Break the Ice was one of the games I adapted so she could play too.  I basically took the orignal game and put masking tape along two sides.  I then color coded the rows. This allowed her to tell another student what block of ice she wanted to be hit out by saying two colors.   Where the colors intersect is the block chosen.  She used her voice output  system  to communicate.  The set up was also useful for other students  using a communication board.  You can color code  a dice or spinner.  Students roll a dice and then say what color they have or will hit out.   It is good for I want, I have, I need statements.

 

Don't break board

 

 

Mouse Books for Language Samples

8 Aug

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Recently, I was looking for new books to add to my therapy collection and noticed that a favorite series of mine are still available.   It is the Mouse Books by Monique Felix.  I have 2 of them and I see there are more in the series now.  I bought mine years ago so the covers have changed.  They are still very reasonable in the $12 range.  I originally bought  mine for $3 which is very telling to  how old mine are.

The books are great for getting language samples  because they do not have  words, only pictures.   I have used them frequently for  my younger students.   The mice are engaging.   The books  are great at eliciting comparison and descriptive vocabulary.  Because they tell a story in a sequence of events I can also get a variety of verb tenses.  I can tell if the student recognizes there is a story sequence.  This is all valuable information to get informally to compare how students do with standardized testing.  Because I use them frequently, I can tell what the average student can do and when they are struggling.

Here is a bit of an inside view of The Opposites book.  There is a white mouse and a dark mouse that do opposite things throughout the book until the surprise ending.

 

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The Colors book illustrates the antics of a mouse in an art studio and explores mixing colors.

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If you are looking for  new books, you will not be disappointed in the number of ways you can use these.