{Looking Ahead} Stinkin' It Up!

Thanksgiving is over; now the real craziness begins! This week, we'll be "stinkin' it up" with Merry Christmas, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt. If you don't know about Stinky Face, he's quite the character. He has so many questions about situations that may or may not happen, and his mom has an answer. She's a wise woman, for sure!
Sparklle SLP has a book companion with quite a bit of activities that I can use with my caseload. For 5 Minute Day, there's a homework sheet included. My plan is to have the students look through the vocabulary cards to find words that have their sound; they will write those words on the homework sheet. The vocabulary cards will also be used with my students who are working on describing objects.
Sequencing/story retell will be worked on using the sequencing cards.
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For Game Day, I made a sequencing activity for Cariboo. My students will produce their target, then choose the picture that depicts what happened next in the story. This is a freebie in my TpT Store; click on the picture below to be taken to it.
My students working on producing complete sentences and basic concepts will work on over and between using The Lonely Reindeer from Ruth Morgan at Chapel Hill Snippets.
Hopefully my mountain school will be back in session next week (after the fires on the mountain directly behind it) and things will get back to normal. As normal as things can be right before Christmas Break, anyway!



My SLP Story {The Frenzied SLPs}

I had a fantastic time in college; really, I had the best time! I tell people if there was one thing I could go back and change, it would be that I would have been a more serious student. I was in the marching band (flag corps), concert band for a couple of years, flute choir for a couple of years, was an RA my senior year, and was a little sister to a fraternity. (Phi Sig, by jig!) 
I went into college 2 weeks after I graduated from high school as a music major. As soon as I found out I had to take sight-singing, I was out of there! (I'll play almost any instrument handed to me after some instruction, but don't ask me to sing in front of people!) Then, I switched to Spanish, because it was something I was good at. After realizing I couldn't really do anything with Spanish without spending some time immersed in the language, I changed to Business Administration, only because somehow I got a very small scholarship. So, there I was floundering, going from major to major, without really knowing what I wanted to do...who I wanted to be.
One of my sisters & I were looking through the school catalog, and we came across Special Ed. That was something I could do, but did I really think I could handle being in a class with the same kids day in and day out? (The answer there is "no"!) Then, right behind SpEd was Communicative Disorders. My sister had a high school classmate who was in the program at the same university, so I called her. She suggested that I make an appointment with the head of the department. The head of the dept. suggested that I take an intro class and see how I like it. I was pretty hooked after that class, but after my first client in the school clinic correctly produced /f/, that was IT. What validation I felt! 
I went on to graduate with my B.S., and had a job in a school system in Ga. waiting for me. (That was way back in the days when you could work in a school with just your Bachelor's.) I had 5 years to attain my Master's. I've had the very good fortune to have some wonderful professors/instructors (in both my undergrad & graduate programs) who didn't stress you out...they wanted you to learn and to be the best therapist you could be. 
My story isn't the most dramatic, but it's mine. Looking back through my life, when I was little (before elementary school), the only person who could understand me was my mom. She said my dad used to get so frustrated because he couldn't understand me. Remember, that was before the days when SLPs were common. My errors must have been developmental; I don't think I had any residual errors by the time I got to first grade.
Then, when I was in 5th or 7th grade, we had to write down what we wanted to do when we grew up. I had written down that I wanted to be a teacher of the Hearing Impaired. I ran across that form a couple of years ago...I had completely forgotten that I had written that down so many years ago. I guess it was destiny!
We'd love to hear your story! If you blog, link up below. You don't have to be a blogger to share your story; go to The Frenzied SLPs Facebook Page and share it there.

{Looking Ahead} It's a Short One!

I'm ready to sit back, watch some football, read a book, eat some turkey & pecan pie, and slide in a couple of naps! 🦃🦃
Since it's a short week, there will be no 5 minute day, and no homework. Game days for everybody!
I have a game that gets my kids up out of their seats and moving around. This is an old game that I got from Linguisystem's Listening for Articulation All Year 'Round. I checked, but it appears that it's no longer in print. It's too bad, because there were some good activities in that book!
This is the "pie game": the first one to get all 4 pieces of their pie is the winner. I put 1 piece of pie at each "station". The students pick what kind of pie they want; they choose from lemon, apple, cherry, blueberry, peach, or pumpkin. Following production of their target, they are allowed to go to a station and choose 1 slice of pie. They turn it over to reveal what kind of pie it is. If it's their slice, they take it and sit down. If it's not their slice, they turn it over & return to their chairs. The key is to get them to understand that they don't want anyone else in the group to know what they turned over.
My younger language students are going to continue with activities that were started this week; they aren't quite ready to change to something else. 

My school system gives us Wed. off, which I really like so I don't have to stay up late Wed. night getting everything ready for the big day. In fact, I have a haircut & a pedi scheduled for that day, so I'll be taking it easy.
Do you have Wednesday off? How do you spend your Thanksgiving?

P.S. Last week, I mentioned that I didn't know what I was going to do for homework. I made a freebie: the students color the pictures that contain their sounds and take it home. You can find it here

Looking Ahead: A Full Week of Therapy

This week has been crazy...no school on Tuesday due to the election, and Wednesday's therapy was a bust with 1st grade on a field trip and district speech meeting. Hopefully next week will be back to normal; or as normal as it usually is!

I'm focusing therapy on Alison Jackson's I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie. Since a lot of kids don't get the parade reference at the end of the book, I'm planning on taking in my pictures from when I had the good fortune to participate in the Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC many moons ago. Well, I kind of did...I was a guard instructor for a band that was in it. Very cool, by the way.

Back to speech stuff. Here's what I have planned:

5 minute day:
Graph a Granny from Crazy Speech World. The students will say their target 5 times, roll the dice, then place a chip on the graph. We'll see which one (if any) gets to the top first, just to make it a little more interesting.

Lower Language: 
I'm going to continue my interactive book from the Thanksgiving Speech/Language Packet, but with a twist. I made a template for a GoTalk that uses "He/She eats (Thanksgiving Food)" from LessonPix

The book attachment from Speechy Musings will be great for eliciting sentences, and it already has visual cues for my little ones since they aren't readers yet.

The comprehension questions from Mindy Stenger (The Speech Bucket) come with visual choices, so they're perfect. 

All of my kids (even the older ones) love to feed the items to the old lady, which is great for sequencing. My readers will put the strips (also from Mindy Stenger) in order for more sequencing work.

GAME DAY:
Mindy included a Bingo game in her packet, and, since we haven't played Bingo in a long time, I suspect it will be a hit!
Bingo might be a bit too much for my smaller ones, so they'll either play the open-ended game that Mindy also included, or they'll play Old Lady Roll and Cover from Mary Lirette (Psssstttt....it's a FREEBIE!).

The only thing I haven't figured out yet is homework. Check back next week, because I may have another freebie for you! 

Looking Ahead: It's Going to Be Busy!

Just in case I haven't said it lately: I love to center my therapy activities around seasonal themes! Some of my students were surprised this week when we started Thanksgiving Activities; I don't think they realized that it's already November...the weather sure doesn't feel like it. 
Before I get into my plans for next week, I want to share the homework my students working on /k,g/ and /f/ took home this week.
Last week, I mentioned that I was going to use pages from Seasonal Artic Worksheets from Super Duper. The only problem is that I have the later sounds so I had to make something for my /k,g/ and /f/ students. If you would like a copy, click here.

Now for next week! When I looked through my materials for Thanksgiving, I realized I have very few (as in 2) book companion packets for November. I wanted something tailored to my caseload, so I spent last Saturday coming up with a packet that isn't just for a certain book. It can be used with any book, or no book at all. 
Click on the picture above to be taken directly to the product in my TpT Store.
Since Tuesday is Election Day, there's no school. For 5 minute day, I'm going to use a Chipper Chat Board since I didn't use it this week. (I decided to use a gameboard instead of the pompoms on the apples.)
This is part of a packet by Taylor Rodgers

My students working on saying complete sentences, vocabulary, and using he/she appropriately will work with an Interactive Booklet:

At the end of the week, they'll complete the take-home version so they can practice at home:

They'll also work on following directions. Some simple directions using basic concepts for the littlest ones:
And some more complex directions that involve crayons/markers for the slightly older ones:
Some will be sequencing "how to cook a turkey":
There is a sheet to choose a favorite Thanksgiving food to describe. I usually have my students color the circle according to the EET beads; this helps them associate the color with the descriptor. I have these students take the sheet home and go over it with their parents.
I have students working on idioms that go perfectly with the Thanksgiving Theme:
My artic students will play a game at the end of the week; whoever gets all of their food items first is the winner.
Of course my artic kids will have homework!
I have some /r/ students who are ready for a challenge, and I have just the thing for them:
I can't wait to see how they do with the Great R Challenge from Small Talk SLP! They have the most trouble with the medial position, so I'm going to challenge them next week and see how they do!

I have a lot going on in my speech room next week. Come back at the end of next week to see how much we got done!






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