concept vocabulary – In Spontaneous Speech

Happy Anniversary and Secret Circle Activity

6 Jul

July 6, 2015 Cindy 0

It is a year ago that I made the switch to a self hosted web site. I do not know why I waited so long. I have enjoyed having the freedom of decorating as I wish. There was definitely a learning curve, especially when I found it was hijacked at one point. Over all It has been worth it. I decided a free download was needed to celebrate. Continue on to find it.

For some reason containers hold a certain fascination for me. It seems like I am always collecting them and thinking about how I can use them for speech therapy. While drinking my morning orange juice, I got to thinking about the cover to the juice container. It would make a good tile for a hiding game. It is at least 2 inches in diameter, can hold a reasonable size card on top, and a small object underneath. I also drink enough juice to get a number of them in a reasonable amount of time. This led me to thinking about the game of Secret Square and Cariboo. It seemed like it could be made into a game adaptation for either game. The covers just need velcro dots to fasten pictures on top.

Do you remember the old therapy game called Secret Square? It was a game that had tiles with pictures on top. A chip is placed under one of the tiles. Students find it by asking questions about the pictured items and eliminating the pictures that do not correspond to the answers. Eventually the chip is found. Cariboo is similar in that it has pictures on doors that can be chosen to find a hidden balls that is used to open a treasure box. Both games are very versatile when addressing goals for describing, questioning, and synthesis of information to get the main idea. It can also address articulation and specific speech vocabulary such as prepositions with a switch of the cards. Students love the idea of finding the secret object and it keeps them motivated. Unfortunately Secret Square and Cariboo are no longer in production. They can be hard to find and a bit pricey if bought second hand on e-bay.

juice lids

Which brings me back to my orange juice container lids. I could see potential for making a game of “Secret Circle” and possibly even a Cariboo type game with items hidden under the lids. This could include pieces of a puzzles hidden under some of the lids. All I needed to do was drink 10 containers of juice to get 10 covers and place velcro dots on top. Pictures for the tops can range from articulation cards such as found on Mommy Speech Therapy to preposition cards such as found as a free product at my TPT store. I updated and revised my Preposition Penguins especially for this post. There are a number of Cariboo cards on Teachers Pay Teachers that would also work.

Don’t Fall Through the Ice

8 Jan

January 8, 2014 Cindy 0

This is our first week back from the holiday break. Some of us are in the grips of winter. Baby its cold out there! It seemed appropriate to go with a winter theme and cold things. I dug into my archives and brought out my version of “Don’t Fall Through the Ice”. This activity has been in the vocabulary section and there are written instructions that can be printed out under the link. I didn’t include pictures so some of you may have missed it. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. The activity is really very simple and made from recycled materials. I get a lot of use from my coffee cans. All you need is a wide mouthed container like a coffee container, a large rubber band, paper towels, marbles, and a spinner made from a plastic lid. The spinner has the words, one, couple, few, and several. The marbles are placed in a container of water. The paper towel is stretched across the mouth of the container and held by the rubber band. Students take turns spinning the spinner, taking the corresponding amount of marbles from the water, and placing them on top of the paper towel. Eventually the water will weaken the paper towel and the marbles will fall through. I used this activity as a reinforcement for students during therapy or as a group activity to work on the concepts of amount. I have table groups play and then compare the number of marbles they put on top before they fall through. In addition to the spinner words you can talk about the concepts of wet/dry, weak/strong, and most/ least.

Game Adaptation for Crocodile Dentist

12 Apr

April 12, 2013 Cindy 0

Here are two adaptations for the game Crocodile Dentist. This is a plastic crocodile that has a spring loaded mouth. The mouth closes when a certain tooth is pushed down. Kids enjoy the suspense of seeing who is going to get bit. The trigger tooth changes location each time the mouth is opened. Some of you may already use this game for reinforcement. I thought you might like to know how you can expand its use a little further. I use it to expand a student’s verbal output to 2 to 3 word phrases using a communication board and to review prepositions when following directions.

Using permanent markers, I colored the teeth alternating colors. I used pink, green, and orange because I already had a die that had those colors. If you don’t have a die you could make a spinner or use colors for a die you have.

For my students with limited verbal abilities, I use the communication board along with the die in a plastic jar. I have the students shake the die to get the color of tooth they need to push down. I then model phrases using the communication board while playing the game. The game creates a lot of opportunities for repetition of phrases such as “I have ….” or “push down green tooth”. I also reinforce saying “your turn” and “my turn.” After repetition the students start to say the appropriate phrase when you point to the correct icons as a prompt. Finally, they may prompt themselves by pointing to the icons and verbalizing. This is a good way to break up an imitative pattern that often happens when training non-verbal children and uses a natural context for turn taking.

The colors are used in the direction cards also. Cards were made using the concept vocabulary: next to, beside, between, right, left, colors, not, side, front, either/or. Children take turns drawing the cards and following the directions for the tooth to be pushed down. We play a variation by giving each child three poker chips. They feed the crocodile a chip if he bites. The person who feeds all three chips is the winner. I provided a word program down load because I thought people may need to adjust the color words for their needs. If you have any difficulties with this, leave me a comment. Print out the cards and have the students pull them out of a bag and then follow the directions while playing the game.

card download here

Eggs-actly Descriptive Game Cards

3 Feb

February 3, 2013 Cindy 0

I made a set of egg cards a number of years ago that I always brought out in the Spring to go along with Easter Egg themes. They evolved from the barrier game cards that are available for download in the social language section. I decided they could use an update so I increased the number and difficulty and added a BINGO game. There is now a bigger range from simple to more difficult. The full set is at TPT. I put 12 of the cards for download here ( Eggs-actly PDF wordpress) . so you can try them out. I had a fellow SLP that works in the middle school use them this last week.. She said they kept the students interested which is not easy for this age group. They were able to progress into the more difficult ones. I did make some adjustments. I had made multiple color spots and they tried to tell the location of each spot. I thought that was a little too much so changed the spots to the same color.

These cards have been used with 3rd grade to 7th grade students to target descriptive vocabulary and to follow multiple directions. The cards range from two step (make a green star in a red triangle) to more complex directions that require 5 or more steps (draw red lines that intersect perpendicular to each other in the center, draw a red triangle in the upper left corner, a yellow circle in the upper right corner, a green heart in the lower left corner and a blue star in the lower right corner). The following vocabulary can be elicited: inside, parallel, diagonal, end, striped, spotted, across, center, corner, intersect, above, below, vertical, horizontal, half, between, left, right, perpendicular, heart, square, diamond, triangle, rectangle, and star.

I’ve also used them to elicit r,l,s and blends in multi-syllable words in spontaneous speech. They were especially good for practicing the th sound in that pesky word with.

You can use them in the traditional speech therapy games of matching, go fish, following multiple directions, and mystery card.

I also used the cards with a free app called Educreations. It allowed the students to use the iPad for drawing. It seems anything with the iPad is very motivating. I liked it because I didn’t have to deal with markers. I hope you have fun and let me know how they work for you.

Maps and Cars and Updates

13 Jan

January 13, 2013 Cindy 0

I have been getting a lot of mileage out of match box cars. (pun intended) The enthusiasm still seems strong and with limited materials for my concrete thinkers, I go as long as possible. I blogged a long time ago about a cars and maps activity I used in my Kindergarten Concept Groups. If you want to look it up it was written in Sept 2009 for concept group #2. I have updated this map over the last few years so that it now looks like this.

I have students select match box cars. We run through the course a couple of times using prepositions; start, across the tracks, turn the corner, over the bridge, through the tunnel, between the grass and at the finish. I then bring out a spinner that doesn’t go above the number 4. We work on turn taking, number concepts, and telling where their car is using a preposition. Depending on the positions of the cars you may also elicit 1st, beside, before, after and behind. For some reason, they always want to run the track backwards so they get a 2nd repetition on the return.

I have continued to make some updates and add resources when I found them. There are free animal alphabet cards on TPT from Jason’s Online Classroom. (Update: sorry they are no longer free but they are still there) In my concept activity number 12 you needed alphabet cards to cut in half. I think these would work great. Look in the Vocabulary section of this site under Half/Whole for the direct link.