ASHA Schools Conference!!!

 
I am taking a break from my typical Tip Tuesday blog post to share with you that I will be heading to Long Beach, CA this weekend to participate in ASHA's Schools Conference!!!!  I'm super excited to learn, learn, learn!

As I will be gone the rest of the week, there will be no FREEBIE Friday post this week either.  But I'll be back next week with another fun freebie so please bare with me.

By the way...I have my monthly Kid Confidential article coming out this Thursday on ASHAsphere.  I am talking about Reactive Attachment Disorder so make sure you check it out!

Sooooooo.....back to the conference!

Will you be there in Long Beach this weekend?  If so and you see me, say "Hello"!

I will take very diligent notes and (with presenters' permissions) I will share with you some of the goodies I learn from this conference in the weeks to come.

Want to know what presentations I'm planning on going to?  Here's my possible list (let me know what you think):

1. We Can Do This!  Practical, Powerful Strategies for Closing Literacy Gaps Using the RtI Model by Nancy Alemian Telian, MS, CCC-SLP
2. Lend Me Your Ears!  Auditory Teaching Strategies for Young Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing by Teresa H. Caraway, PhD, CCC-SLP
3. Enhancing Phonological and Metaphonological Systems of Children With Highly Unintelligible Speech: An Update by Barbara W. Hodson, PhD, CCC-SLP
4. Treatment Decision Dilemmas and Strategies for APD by Gail J. Richard, PhD, CCC-SLP
5. Childhood Apraxia of Speech: Thearpy Strategies That Make a Difference by David Hammer, MA, CCC-SLP

So, what do you think of my choices?  I hope I learn some new interesting things so that I can share them with all of you out there in the cyberworld!!!!

Now it will most likely take me a few weeks to blog about all the info I learn at this conference.  So please be patient and bare with me!

Happy Talking!!!

FREEBIE Friday: Circle the Rhyme...

I have a few clients that are working on phonological awareness activities in order to improve their auditory discrimination skills.  I make these worksheets for therapy and thought I'd share with you.  

These are also great for homework!

Grab your free copy here!

Enjoy!

Tip Tuesday! Why I love "I Spy" Books!

I have a LOVE-LOVE relationship with the "I Spy" book series.  When they began publishing their toddler series AND began offering them at discounted rates on Scholastic Books, I wanted to kiss someone!

"I Spy" books are SO GREAT for the younger population for many reasons:

1.  Vocabulary development: Oh the things we can see in these books!!!  The wide variety of objects pictured on each page lends itself for some great vocabulary expansion for object labels (i.e. object names).

2.  Prepositions: I LOVE working on prepositions (i.e. location words) once the objects are found on each page.  A simple "Oh where is the (object name)?" or "Where was that (object name) hiding?" is a great way to work on prepositions (next to, above/below, over/under, behind, in, on).


3.  Visual and Auditory Memory: How great is the page with the list of pictures your child needs to find?  I love to read it, have the child point to the pictured objects on THAT page (while I have the "spy" page covered up)...then cover up the prompt page and have the child try to recall (using visual and auditory memory skills) and find the objects.  It's a great way to train the auditory processing skills of listening and recalling key words early on in development (you can focus on the same processing skills for older populations using the "I spy" older series).

4.  Phonological Awareness and Rhyming: I love that every two pages completes a rhyme!  Great early phonological awareness skill and helps in predicting the end of the sentence.

5.  Adjective development: For many of these rhymes to be completed, several adjectives are used which I just LOVE!  It's a great way to expose a child to adjectives and a fun way to talk about descriptions of objects.  I always expand it by finding a different object on the "spy" page and provide a similar adjective (color, texture, size, etc.).  It doesn't have to be one of the objects located.

Anyway, these are 5 of the reasons why I love, love, love using "I spy" books in therapy as well as with my own child.

Happy talking...and spying!!!

Communication Station is now on Bloglovin'!!!!

Courtesy of:  www.abeautifulness.com

For all of you out there wondering how you can follow me now that Google Reader is gone...don't worry!  Follow me on Bloglovin'!!!!!  I'll see you there!!!!

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Taking some time!!!

Hello my committed followers!  You may notice that this week I will not have any new posts.  Why you ask?  Well...my family and I are on vacation at Disney World!!!!

We are so excited and happy to be able to surprise our son with this trip AND visit my husband's family while we are there!

So this means no new posts this week BUT, keep your eyes peeled b/c next week we will be back and maybe I'll share some family fun photos with you!

Have a wonderful week with your family!

Freebie Friday: Sound Off! The Train is Coming: A phonological awareness game

Here is another phonological awareness game I made with these cute train graphics from ReviDevi that I found on mygraphico.com.  Super cute and great for my kiddos working on listening for their target sounds in various words! 

Also these phonological awareness activities have really helped my kiddos who use phonological processes become more aware of sounds in various positions in each word.

So that's it!  Enjoy this activity! 

Grab your free copy here!

Tip Tuesday: My Top 10 Books for Early Language Learning!

I LOVE books so much, this was a difficult blog to write.  But here is a list of my Top 10 Early Language Learning Books (in no particular order(pictures in this blog are courtesy of Amazon.com unless otherwise specified)):










1.  Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle:  I love using this book to introduce and teach animals, colors, sequencing, and rhyming. 





2.  The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown:  This is a wonderful farm themed book.  It talks about numerous animals of varying sizes, their sounds, where they live, what they do.  It has wonderful rhymes and rhythms.

3.  Boo, Ma, La, La, La and/or The Going to Bed Book, both by Sandra Boynton:  I LOVE all of her books!  She has a great sense of what is auditorally and visually pleasing to very young children.  Great rhyming and rhythm and cute illustrations.






4.  5 Little Monkeys (Pumkins, Ducklings, etc.) (all by various authors):  Any of these early counting books are so great for early math concepts.  They are catchy and fun to add some finger plays with them and are repetitive. (picture courtesy of: www.centerusd.k12.ca.us)






5.  My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss:  I LOVE this book so, so much because in is a great early language book that talks about emotions and associates colors with emotions!  Its a great way to visually introduce feelings to young children.




6.Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Dr. Seuss:  This book has GREAT rhyming and a wonderful rhythm.  This is a great early phonological awareness book and the illustrations are entertaining and fun...and super fun to act out with musical instruments (homemade or real).  P.S. It was one of my favorites as a child too!!! :)





7.  I Spy Toddler Book Series!:  I have a post coming about why I LOVE these books so much but I still have to add them to my list of top 10 b/c I use them so often and love them so much!  Want to know why I love this series so much?  Keep your eyes peeled for my upcoming post on the "I spy" books!!!



8.  Picture books:  Any picture books are GREAT for facilitating a language sample, assessing child's ability to use picture cues to narrate a story, make inferences and predictions and retell a story!




9.  My first words books:  There are many different kinds of these books published by different companies.  But they are so great for early vocabulary development.  Many times these books are organized by categories of objects (so you have a page of "foods, clothing, transportation, farm animals, jungle animals", etc.) and is a GREAT way to facilitate semantic organization (i.e. organization of vocabulary words) by categories.





10.  The Very Hungry Caterpillar:  I know I already have an Eric Carle book on this list but I had to add this one as well because I using this book many times as a child's first science book!  Science?  Yes, I said science!  This book is so great in that it is repetitive, has tons of pictures to label, introduces days of the week...BUT the BEST part of this book is the last few pages that explain the cocoon the caterpillar makes and stays in for 2 weeks before he pops out as....you guessed it...a butterfly!

  

 Honorable Mention:  Pete the Cat (book series):  I love the Pete the Cat book series.  Every book has a song that goes with it and they focus on early concepts (colors, numbers, going to school, etc.).  It also has a nice element to teach coping strategies in each book (Pete's feathers never get ruffled when things go wrong; rather he loves to say "It's all good!" and he keeps moving forward).  This is my honorable mention, NOT because I like these books any less but b/c these books are really appropriate for those PK age kiddos rather than the Birth-3 years that we've been focusing on BUT they are just so so good that your younger kids will love to listen the you reading and singing their songs too!  (picture courtsey:  iwema.edublogs.org )

So that's it for my list!  What are your favorite books for early language learning?  I bet those of you that are parents and teachers out there have a TON of favorites!  Please share!

And as always, happy talking!