therapy materials from scratch. – Page 2

Emotions and Body Parts Theme

21 Feb

February 21, 2016 Cindy 0

I traditionally use the months of February and March to work on body parts and emotions theme. There are quite a few free materials you can use out there. To help you with your search I have listed a few activities I have used with my early language learners.

I started with following directions and naming body parts. I had students by put band aids on a print out of a boy and girl. Teachers notebook: Toadally Tots Shop has a free download called Betty and Billy Boo-Boo which you might want to check out here. This was not only good for naming body parts but was also good for subject, object, and possessive pronouns.

I used musical play to encourage movement and use of body parts. The Hokey pokey song works well for this. There is an United Kingdom version: Hokey Pokey- Kids song on You tube. I used a hula hoop to designate the middle of the circle which worked out particularly well on this version as it mimicked the video. I liked the speed on this one because my students could keep up. Head Shoulders Knees and Toes is another good one. I used this version here.

I used bubbles to motivate some of my reluctant participants. Students drew a body part from a bag. You can use pictures printed from a symbol system or for those who respond better to objects you can use potato head parts. I blew bubbles and they tried to pop a bubble using their body parts that corresponded to the one they drew. They got quite a kick out of getting a bubble with their nose.

To work on facial expressions, I found this Leprechaun that works well for a movable face. The Leprechaun comes from http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/. It gives directions on how to draw a Leprechaun which can then be placed on a toilet paper roll. There are directions for making it on the toilet paper roll here. you can make a Mad lib leprechaun story here. The students have fun turning the roll to get a different face to match an emotion in the story.

I hope you have fun with these activities and it makes your lesson planning easier. Let me know if you have any other activities that can be added.

A Simple Tissue Paper Tree Project

26 Nov

November 26, 2015 Cindy 0

Do you need a simple project for the winter season? This tree was made by my students and completed during one 20 minute therapy session. Students at all grade levels seemed to enjoy making them. They also made a good bulletin board that was culturally sensitive for this time of year. I added the silhouettes to discuss winter sports and the word silhouette.

Tissue Paper Tree Art Project

I targeted quite a few goals with this project. As usual, I used the app StoryKit to make the directions. My articulation and older students began by sequencing and taking pictures. They recorded the directions using their best articulation skills. My language students targeted vocabulary such as stencil, limbs, triangle, around, and tree trunk. My language processing students listened to the directions and followed them in the correct sequence.

You can get the pattern for the stencil here.

The storykit directions are here. I removed the verbal directions because of student confidentiality.

Target Antonyms

25 Jan

January 25, 2014 Cindy 0

January sure has gone fast. Here we are a week away from February. We are coming to the end of a grading period so I am busy writing progress reports. I am a bit behind because of other meetings. I am sure you can all relate to that. We have a new software program which makes it a little harder. The paper work has been a bit of a challenge this year.

It is getting harder to be creative with the bulletin board lately. I stayed with my theme of antonyms for February. I looked in my cupboard and noticed that I have a large supply of straws on hand. Valentines Day brings out the cupid in all of us so I decided to make arrows. It helped that we have die cuts for hearts available. The die cut makes a heart as an outline and a smaller heart to be pushed out of the center. We used the smaller hearts to make the point of the arrow and used a folded rectangle for the feathered end. The students wrote a word on the arrow head and the opposite word on the white paper to match. It doesn’t look like the words are visible in the picture. This is the beginning of our project. I will post updates as we go. The students are making directions as usual. However, we are regulated for voices as well as visual images so I can not post my story kit directions until we are done and I can remove the child audio. This is what it is looking like. Here is the Storykit link to the directions: arrow directions

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.

Build a Paper Tower; A Cooperative Challenge

3 Mar

March 3, 2013 Cindy 0

It seems a lot of people were enthused about the rubber band and paper cup activity. If you liked that one, you may also like the paper tower activity. It has been in the social pragmatics section. Sometimes when directions are just on paper you don’t see how great an activity is. I think the paper tower might be one of those activities. You usually don’t have to go far for materials. Just empty out your recycle box.

This activity works well with Rockbrain if you are doing the Superflex program. A little instruction about being flexible with your thinking and allowing other people to have different ideas helps on this one. I have used this activity with different sizes of social pragmatic groups who were sometimes divided into competing teams. They were given flat pieces of paper out of the recycle bin and told to build as high of a tower as they could. No other materials were allowed. There really isn’t a wrong way to do this. It seems they typically divide into the cylinder group, or the fold into squares or triangle group.

It really is a good activity for group participation and sharing of ideas. They have made it as high as 6 levels. By that time a student is standing on a chair and no one is breathing. One false move and the whole thing comes tumbling. Hopefully no one will have a Brain Eater moment.

Just a note to let you know I updated the (Comprehension of Complex Sentences) I am putting 3 pages for a free download here.

I have 36 cards available at the TPT store

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Cynthia-Montalbano