Fall-Themed Articulation Ideas: Link Up

The Frenzied SLPs are at it again with another great link up!  This week we are talking all about your fall themed articulation ideas so don't miss out on the fun.

I have written several blogs in the past about some of my Halloween themed activities but I will try to condense some of my favorites here below.

1.  Articulation Spider Web:  I know this looks like a lot of work but I LOVE incorporating movement into my speech therapy sessions (especially for my little guys).  This simple human sized spider web was made with some black yarn, a fence and a few articulation cards.  For more information, check it out the full post here.

2.  Halloween Bean Bag Toss:  This is another fun movement activity AND it's SUPER simple to create!  All you need is a few bean bags, index cards with numbers 1-10, a Halloween bucket and a bit of space. I like to use this activity for multiple repetitions of target sounds.  Check out the full post here for some ideas on how you could use this fun activity.

3.  Trick or Treat Lane Game:  This is a simple board game I made a few years ago that my clients have enjoyed at this time of year.  All you need to do is print it out and it's for the taking.  This could be used for both articulation as well as language goals.  Just have fun with it!  Go to this original post and you will find it at the bottom for download.

Ok so these are just a few of my favorite activities to do during this time of year to target articulation.  What are yours?  

Have fun and happy talking!

An InLinkz Link-up

Fall Fun!

Need something to do for the fall now that the Halloween fun is over?  Well here are a few fun fall activities you can do at school or at home.  Enjoy!

 Fall Sensory Bin-I had some extra macaroni noodles that I colored with food coloring a long time ago, some old rotini and some ziti noodles.  I decided to add the pasta with some plastic acorns and gourds I bought from Target's $ bins to my sensory table.  Threw in old butter and sour cream containers along with spoons and...voila'!  We had lots of fun "cooking" up soup, ice cream, cereal and so many other concoctions!

Pumpkin Painting:  Pumpkins are NOT necessarily just for Halloween.  We love our pumpkin spices in the fall and our pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving!  So, I bought a few small white pumpkins (probably technically gourds), put some acryllic paint (I had in the house) in a bowl and gave the kids a paintbrush.  Oh the language this activity produces!  We talked about what we are making, what colors we were using and mixing together to make other colors.  Great science experiment as well!!!  Or you can cut the pumpkins in half and place face down in paint and use it as a stamper to paint pumpkin shapes!
(Tip:  You don't have time or money to buy pumpkins for every child you see?  Just cut out pumpkins from construction paper and paint that!  You can still stimulate the same language and perform your science experiements without breaking the bank!)


Autumn Treasture Hunt:  Use toliet paper rolls and make some binoculars.  Use your binoculars to explore the outside world and find some fall items such as acorns, pinecones, red/yellow/green/brown leaves, leaves with smooth edges vs. pointy edges, sticks, tree bark and maybe even some fall flowers!  I did this with my son and he has a GREAT time exploring.  I like this activity because its a great following directions activity with the use of multiple modifiers (colors, textures, sizes, shapes, etc.).  You can focus on listening or reading compehension skills as well! And how fun is it to wear homemade binoculars around our necks while we search for our tall items!



Fall Collage:  After you go on your Autumn Treasure Hunt, you can take some of those wonderful items home and make a fall collage!  We like to do this on contact paper becuase its fun to make our leaves stick but you can use paper and glue too!  Whatever works for you.  You can make this a fun directions task as well (e.g. "Place the red leaf above/below/next to the brown leaf." etc.)  Or have your child use some self talk to describe what he/she is doing when making their collage.  Keep it light and remember to just have fun!

Fall is such a great time to explore and experiment!  Do you have another fall activity you love to do with your children?  Comment below!

Happy Talking!

Halloween Bean Bag Toss!

Pumpkin Bean Bag Toss:  I just played this simple game last week and it was super fun and great for facilitating multiple repetitions of target sounds! 

First, I cut up 10 index cards and numbered them accordingly.

I placed two bean bags on the ground (different color for each child).  If you have more than two kiddos, just label the bean bags somehow (masking tape or stickers maybe?).  Don't have bean bags? You can fill snack ziplock bags up with beans, pasta, or rice and tape shut with packaging tape as a substitute.

I then placed the index cards in a row (in numerical order) from farthest to closest the pumpkin bucket (that I purchased for $1 at the dollar tree).

The child picks a target picture and each time he/she produces word (sound, syllable, sentence, etc. whatever level you are working on) correctly, the child jumps to the next number.  Once the child says the target incorrectly, he/she stops jumping and must throw the bean bag from the number he/she is on.  Therefore, the more times he/she says the target correctly, the closer the child gets to the bucket. 

And of course whoever gets the most bean bags in the bucket by the end of the game...wins!

I love this simple activity because it is motivating to repeat the production correctly up to 10 times.  It adds gross motor skills and fun to therapy, and encourages self-monitoring skills as the child needs to know when he/she said the target correctly.

IF you are working specifically on self-monitoring and discrimination (you may want to change the rules a bit), you can reward the child with a forward jump IF the child can demonstrate awareness of correct and incorrect productions.

And of course this activitiy could really be used for numerous goals (whatever stimulus cards you like to use) as well as any holiday or theme...just change the bucket you are throwing your bean bag in and voila' and activity for the whole year through!

Do you have a fun twist to this activity?  Comment below.

Happy Talking!!!

Halloween Fun from $1 Bin PLUS Halloween Game FREEBIE!

I found these fun Halloween erasers for $1 a bag in Target's $ bin section.  They come in packages of 25.  I knew when I first saw them I could use them for some type of therapy activity.  And luckily for me, I remembered I had them when the time came for me to use them. 

This past week, I was seeing a PK kiddo and I thought it could be fun to use these erasers as a reinforcer activity.  So...

I brought my "Haunted House" that I got from the Dollar tree to a  speech session.

I mixed up a bunch of the Halloween erasers to the house, and we (my client and I) shook them up really well!  After several trials of target words he was able to...

...use tongs to lift out as many erasers as he could WITHOUT LOOKING!!!! (That was the fun part!)  I love adding tongs to therapy activities becuase they are a GREAT way to work on fine motor skills as well!

Once the erasers were out, we spent time sorting them and at the end of the session we counted each column and determined which erasers we had the "most", and the "least" (great way to add math concepts to our activity).  I also pointed out that although it LOOKS like we have the MOST skeletons, we actually had more ghosts, showing my little friend that length does not necessarily equal more quantity.  A nice additional lesson in perception to boot!

We had a great time and his laugh during the session was infections and he kept cracking me up! 

Such a simple activity that kept a 4 year old actively participating in continuous practice for 30 minutes! 

ALSO...here's an added bonus!  A Halloween Gameboard Freebie!
Check out Trick or Treat Lane below!!!

For the full PDF version, click below!
Trick or Treat Lane Game


Remember you can use these activities above for ANY goals you are working on.

Happy Talking!!!

Articulation Spider Web, Craft, and Snack!

Liked the Busy spider activity?  Here are a few more fun Halloween articulation and language activities you could do at home or in therapy.  Articulation Spider Web-I bought some yarn and made a human spider web for the kids to climb through. 

I used clothes pins to fasten the articulation pictures to the yarn (you could use language pictures or any other stimuli you are working with).  The children can take turns climbing through the web and take the pictures off the spider web as they pass them. 

They can name each picture, or put the picture word in a phrase or sentence to target the sounds at a more complex level.  The fun of trying to climb through the spider web without knocking the pictures off is a challenge and keeps the children interested.  IF the target sound was said incorrectly, they put the picture BACK on the web.  The child with the most pictures at the end, wins!

Saw this fun simple hand print spider craft on pinterest somewhere a while back and thought since we were already focusing on spiders we could make a simple craft to go with it.  It is fun to provide a model to for children and see if they can problem solve what steps it takes to make the craft.  You can talk about what materials you need, and see if they can figure out how to make the spider.  You'll be surprised with all the solutions they may come up with.

http://amberbrunson.blogspot.com/2010/10/spider-snacks.html

Here is a fun spider snack that I found online.  I used peanut butter crackers, pretzel sticks and M&Ms, but I have seen other pictures of people using oreos rather than crackers.  Again, its fun to make a model without the kids seeing, and watch how they problem solve what materials they need and what steps they need to take to make the snack.  Tip:  I used extra peanut butter to hold the legs on the cracker and to achor the M&M eyes!  It is fun to watch how the kids problem solve how to keep those spider legs on!


Enjoy!  Happy Talking!!!!

Busy Spider Game: A Halloween Themed activity!

I love Eric Carle's book,  The Very Busy Spider!  (I love all of his books really, but I especially love this book for this time of year.)  I tend to read it often in the fall, probably because this is the time when we start seeing more spiders out right before the cold weather hits.  Also it lends itself to discussing the difference between arachnids and insects.  But maybe the biggest reason I love doing spider activities in the fall is because these are activities that are culturally appropriate. Even if in your school you can't talk about that crazy word "Halloween".  You can ALWAYS talk about spiders!!!



If you haven't read it, this book is great for PK and early Elementary kiddos.  Its a repetitive story about how numerous farm animals want to play with a spider but the spider is too busy to play (you'll have to get the book to find out why).  You can discuss farm animals, the noises the make, the things they like to do.  As the book is repetitious your children will begin to repeat or predict and anticipate words in the story as you read!

Inspired by this book I made a fun little game that you could do in conjunction with reading the book or separately as a reinforcement activity!  So its great for any type of speech, language, voice, fluency, social skills activity.

**Communication Station: Speech Therapy, PLLC reserves the creative rights to all materials created and distributed via communicationstationspeechtx.blospot.com.  For personal use only!  NOT for redistribution!  If your friends want a copy, feel free to direct them to this website where they can download and print their own copy.**

Your students will each get their own spider web sheet. 

The object is to collect all four flies AND their spider from the hodge-podge of spiders, flies, and farm animals that you place in a bucket, pile or even under stimulus cards!

Symbols from Boardmaker:  The Picture Communication Symbols ©1981–2010 by Mayer-Johnson LLC. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Used with permission.  Boardmaker™ is a trademark of Mayer-Johnson LLC.  DynaVox Mayer-Johnson; 2100 Wharton Street; Suite 400; Pittsburgh, PA 15203; Phone: 1 (800) 588-4548; Fax: 1 (866) 585-6260; Email: mayer-johnson.usa@mayer-johnson.com; Web site: www.mayer-johnson.com

If a student has all four flies (but not their spider yet) and picks up another fly,  the fly must return to the pile and the game moves on to the next person.

Full PDF Version Below:

Busy Spider Game

Enjoy!  Happy Talking!!!!

Soical Story: Trick or Treating!

 Need a Social Story for Halloween?  I made this simple story by using clipart from Microsoft powerpoint.

If you want to make it more personal, I would suggest taking pictures of your student or child practicing Trick or Treat activtivies and add them after their respective pages within the book!  Check it out!  Full PDF version to download is below! 

 

Remember:  repetition is the KEY!  Read often and practice skills daily for a successful Trick or Treat experience!

Full PDF Version:
Trick or Treating

Enjoy!  Happy Talking!!!



Articulation Fall Leaves

Here are several pages of various pictures you can use for a fall themed game for articulation, vocabulary development, following directions, answering ?s, using modifiers to describe pictures, combining pictures to make sentences and many, many more language activities.  Pictures courtesy of Boardmaker Plus.

This packet has several pages of familiar initial /k, g, s, r/ sound pictures as well as a blank page so you can create your own. 

**For Personal Use ONLY; NOT for redistribution!  Communication Station: Speech Therapy, PLLC reserves the creative rights to all materials made and published on communicationstationspeechtx.blogspot.com.**

Symbols from Boardmaker:  The Picture Communication Symbols ©1981–2010 by Mayer-Johnson LLC. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Used with permission.  Boardmaker™ is a trademark of Mayer-Johnson LLC.  DynaVox Mayer-Johnson; 2100 Wharton Street; Suite 400; Pittsburgh, PA 15203; Phone: 1 (800) 588-4548; Fax: 1 (866) 585-6260; Email: mayer-johnson.usa@mayer-johnson.com; Web site: www.mayer-johnson.com

If you are a parent and not really sure how to use these cards here's a fun list of 10 quick and simple games you can play:

1.  I spy:  cut up, hide pics around your room/house and play "I spy" with your children.

2.  Memory/Concentration:  print 2 copies and play a old fashioned version of memory (making sure your child labels each word/picture when picked up)

3.  Silly Stories:  put pictures in a bucket and pull each out one by one adding sentences onto a make a silly story.

4.  Hot-n-Cold:  at home, pick a safe room, post/hide pictures and have your child (blindfolded) search the room, and you say "hot" or "cold" as your child get closer or farther away from pictures.

5.  Twister fun:  put cards on Twister mat and your child gets to pick up cards on the dot of the color he/she spun.

6.  Bowling:  you don't need bowling pins for this game...just a ball and some empty water bottles as pins.  You can tape pictures to "pins" or put pictures under them (which I prefer b/c then you don't mess up the pictures with tape) and as your child knocks over the pins he/she labels the picture.

7.  Golf:  all you need is a broom and a ball, as your child rolls OVER pictures placed on the floor he/she labels them or uses them in a sentence etc.

8.  Guessing Game:  "I'm thinking of a...." You and your child take turns describing pictures by their attributes and guessing, if guessed correctly, that person gets the card.  The one with most cards wins!

9.  Silly Songs:  Same premise of silly sentences, as you pick out a picture you and your child attempt to think of a song (or make on up) with that word in it.

10.  Silly Rhymes:  Create silly rhymes with the pictures you and your child choose.

Full PDF version:

Fall Leaves Initial k, g, r, s

You have another idea for these leaves? Feel free to share by commenting below! 
Happy Talking!!!