Therapy Week in Review: 01/17/2014

To say that I've been a little unmotivated since the break would be a bit of an understatement.  I'm having a hard time getting back into therapy mode.  (Guess I'm still on "Key Time"!) The first week back after break was a short week (we only went to school for 3 days), and then on Monday I faced an 8:00 observation.  I knew it was coming (ours have to be announced), so there was no surprise.  I was dreading Friday because of a meeting.  It helps to have a supportive Special Ed. Supervisor & principal.  In fact, my principal sent a very encouraging email following the meeting.  The meeting went very well, so it turned out not to be that big of a deal.  Isn't that the way it goes most of the time?  You get so worked up about what "may" happen, but if you're prepared, it will go smoothly.
Enough of that!  Here's what we did in my therapy room this week:
This week was "Bear Snores On" (Karma Wilson, Jane Chapman) week, with activities from Mindy Stenger's Companion Packet.  Oh, how I love this book!  While reading the book to my preschoolers, they found the animal that was introduced and matched it to the "shadow picture".  

My preschoolers that are in the preschool class at school completed some of the activities from the packet.
Since Monday was "5 Minute Day", I had the following stations set up:
1) Articulate It! as a listening station
2) Roll & Color Speech & Language Practice Set (A freebie by Mindy Stenger!)

The students said their target 3 times, then rolled a dice and colored that many sleds.  The 3 cards just above the paper are visual directions:  1) Say word, 2) roll dice, 3) color.  I use those as reminders to the students so they will work independently while I'm working 1 on 1 with another student for 5 minutes.
3) I only did this with 1 group since that is the only group that has 4 students with all of them working on /r/:  The student did their tongue stimulation exercise with a Nuk brush, then used the Smartboard to complete a snowman.  I completely forgot to take a picture of that activity since that was when I was being observed.

For Tuesday, I used the Roll & Color activity, but the students played it as a game to see who could finish their sleds first.

Wednesday and Thursday was "Game Day".  We re-read "Bear Snores On", and played the reinforcement game that is in Mindy's packet:

One student used the verbs that are in the packet to make sentences using the verb in the past, present, and future tense.  He also used the plural cards included in the packet.

Have you ever heard of "Noisy Stories"?   The stories are short and very repetitive, and include sounds throughout the story.  This month, we are reading "The Beautiful Coat".  The sounds targeted are "sh", /t/, /m/, and /o/.  There will be a sentence followed by the target sound 3 times.  For example, "The wind blew.  sh-sh-sh."  I am using this with one of my students who is nonverbal. This week, he imitated /t, m, o/!  He had imitated the /t/ last week, but this was the first time I've heard an /o/!  I was amazed!  He had been watching my mouth pretty intently, so I thought it was just a matter of time before he correctly produced it.
For more in depth information on "Noisy Stories", visit Carrie; she wrote a post last January about using the book in therapy.  She also has some great ideas for expansion activities.
If you use "Noisy Stories" in your therapy, how do you use it?